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“supernatural 





By the Rey. Morgan Dir, DD. 


DUKE 
UNIVERSITY 





DIVINITY SCHOOL 
LIBRARY 


oe? Bae 








in 2022 with funding from ‘ 
Duke University Libraries | 1 


https://archive.org/details/threeguardians 


THREE GUARDIANS 


OF 


SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 








~ 


THREE GUARDIANS 


OF 


SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


THE BEDELL LECTURES FOR 1899 


DELIVERED IN THE COLLEGE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 
GAMBIER, OHIO, JUNE 20TH AND 21ST, 1901 


BY 
MORGAN DIX, S.T.D., D.C.L., D.D. Oxon. 


RECTOR OF TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK 


NEW YORK 
EDWIN S. GORHAM, PUvuBLISHER 
CuurcH Missions House 
FourTH AVENUE AND 22D STREET 
1901 





Press of J. J. Little & C 
ee hocks 


~~ 


FROM THE COMMUNICATION OF THE 
FOUNDERS OF THE BEDELL 
PECTURESHTE. 


June 20, 1880. 

GENTLEMEN : We have consecrated and set apart for the 
service of God the sum of five thousand dollars, to be devoted 
to the establishment of a lecture or lectures in the Institutions 
at Gambier on the evidences of Natural and Revealed 
Religion, or the Relations of Science and Religion. 

We ask permission of the Trustees to establish the lecture 
immediately, with the following provisions : 

The lecture or lectures shall be delivered biennially on 
Founders’ Day (if such a day shall be established) or other 
appropriate time. During our lifetime, or the lifetime of either 
of us, the nomination of the lectureship shall rest with us. 

The interest for two years on the fund, less the sum neces- 
sary to pay for the publication, shall be paid to the Lecturer. 

The Lecturer shall also have one-half of the net profits of 
the publication during the first two years after the date of pub- 
lication. All other profits shall be the profits of the Board, 
and shall be added to the capital of the lectureship. 

We express our preference that the lecture or lectures shall 
be delivered in the Church of the Holy Spirit, if such build- 
ing be in existence ; and shall be delivered in the presence of 
all the members of the Institutions under the authority of the 
Board. 

We ask that the day on which the lecture, or the first of 
each series of lectures, shall be delivered shall be a holiday. 

We wish that the nomination to this lectureship shall be 
restricted by no other consideration than the ability of the 
appointee to discharge the duty to the highest glory of God 
in the completest presentation of the subject. 

We desire that the lectures shall be published in uniform 


Vv 


vi List of Previous Lectures 


shape, and that a copy of each shall be placed in the libraries 
of Bexley Hall, Kenyon College, and of the Philomathean 
and Nu Kappa Pi Society. 
Asking a favorable consideration of the Trustees, 
We remain, with respect, 
G. T. BEDELL, 


JuLiaA BEDELL. 
To the Trustees of the Theological Seminary of 
the Diocese of Ohio and Kenyon College. 





LIST OF PREVIOUS LECTURES ON THE BEDELL 
FOUNDATION. 


1881. ‘‘ THE Wor Lp’s WITNEss TO CuRIST,” by the Rt. 
Rev. John Williams, D.D., etc., Bishop of Connecticut. 

1883. ‘‘ REVEALED RELIGION IN RELATION TO THE MORAL 
BEING OF GoD,” by the Rt. Rev. Henry Cotterill, D.D., etc., 
Bishop of Edinburgh. 

1885. ‘‘ THE WORLD AND THE Locos,” by the Rt. Rey. 
Hugh Miller Thompson, D.D., etc., Bishop of Mississippi. 

1887. ‘‘ THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF EVOLUTION,” by the 
Rev. James McCosh, D.D., etc., President of Princeton Col- 
lege. 

1889. ‘‘ THE HIsTORICAL CHRIST THE MORAL POWER OF 
History,” by the Rev. David H. Greer, D.D., etc., Rector 
of St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York. 

1891. ‘‘ Hoty Writ AND MODERN THOUGHT,” by the Rt. 
Rey. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, D.D., etc., Bishop of Western 
New York. 

1893. ‘‘ THE WITNESS OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH TO 
PURE CHRISTIANITY,” by the Rt. Rev. William A. Leonard, 
D.D., etc., Bishop of Ohio. 

1895. ‘‘Gop AND PRAYER,” by the Rt. Rev. Boyd Vin- 
cent, S.T.D., Bishop Coadjutor of Southern Ohio. 

1897. ‘‘ THE NATIONAL CuHuRCH,” by Rey. W. R. Hunt- 
ington, D.D., Rector of Grace Church, New York. 


NOTICE. 


THE long delay in delivering the following 
lectures was due to a series of circumstances 
beyond my control, of which it is unnecessary 
to give an account. Very grateful acknowl- 
edgments are due to the patience and indulgence 
of my kind friends at Gambier. 


Pripe’s Crossinc, Mass., 
August 14, 1g0r. 


If 


III. 


IV. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


LECTURE I, 
PAGE 


. THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. . . I 


Unchanged and unchanging truth. 
Honor of standing for the Catholic faith. 


OUTLOOK FOR THE NEW CENTURY. . ... . 3 
(1) Widespread interest in religion. 

(2) Not in itself a sign of health. 

(3) Drift of modern discussion. 


PROPOSALS TO READJUST CHRISTIANITY. . . . 4 
(1) New views of the Bible. 

(2) New views of the Church. 

(3) New views of Christ. 


THE BASIS OF THE PROPOSED READJUSTMENT 
DISLIKE OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY AND SUPER- 
NATURAL RELIGTONss | ellis eieilital Wel vain 5 

(1) Illustrated by predictions of a general impend- 

ing rejection of supernatural religion, . . . 7 

(2) And by the rise of new systems to take the place 

of the old ; 
(3) Therefore the question about the supernatural 
is the vital issue of the day, 
ix 


x Table of Contents 





PAGB 
(4) And current unrest can be traced direct to a 
process of leavening modern thought with the 
principles of an old philosophy revised and 
adapted for modern use. |. /aeee 


V. DEFINITION OF THE WORD ‘‘SUPERNATURAL.” . 13 
(1) Is there anything above nature ? 
(2) The reply given by neo-pantheism. 
(3) Fourteen philosophical propositions applied as 
tests of tendency of thoughts about religion. 
(4) Widespread influence of neo-pantheism, and its 
results on religion and society. 


VI. CAN FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL BE DESTROYED? 24 
(1) Defended by three divinely appointed guardians, 
Christ, the Church, and the Bible. 
(2) Those witnesses cannot be silenced nor killed. 


LECYURE II. 


I. FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL: ITS BASIS. . . . 32 
(1) Not logical argument and @ griorvt demonstra- 
tion, 
(2) But innate in man, compelling assent. 
(3) The Church irrevocably committed to assert it. 
(4) The Christian religion is ‘‘saturated with the 
supernatural.” 


II. THE FIRST GUARDIAN: THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. . 37 
(rt) Declared to be the Word of God. 
(2) A revelation, written under the influence of the 
Holy Ghost. 
(3) Their position in the Church from the beginning 
and now. 


Table of Contents xi 


- PAGE 
III. WHAT ISTHEIR TESTIMONY TO THE SUPERNATURAL? 40 

(1) Continuous from Genesis to Revelation. 

(2) Impossible to eliminate the miraculous and 
supernatural from the Sacred Books without 
destroying them as a revelation and an 
authority. 

(3) Points in the continuous narrative. 

(i.) A personal God ; 

(ii.) Always dealing with men ; 

(iii.) Creator of all that exists outside Himself ; 

(iv.) At once transcendent and immanent. 

(v.) Governing the worlds which He has made. 

(vi.) Calling a peculiar people to be His: 

(vii.) Their history a record of signs and won- 
ders. 

(4) Continuation. 

(i) The incarnation of this personal God. . . 47 
(ii.) Faith in it presupposes a supernatural 
world and powers beyond the range of 
nature. 
(iii.) The twofold ministry of Christ : 
(2) Prophetic. 
(4) Sacerdotal. 
(iv.) The atonement for sin. 
(v.) The resurrection from the grave. 
(vi.) The founding of the Catholic Church. 
(2) Her life a supernatural life. 
(4) The kingdom is not of this world. 


IV. MODERN CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE... . . . . . 56 


(1) Destruction of faith in the Scriptures indis- 
pensable to the success of the assault on 
supernatural religion. 


xii Table of Contents 





PAGE 
(2) Criticism in its work on the outward form. . . 57 
(i.) Loss of the originals; efforts to ascertain 
what was the original text, legitimate and 
useful. 

(ii.) Questions of date, authorship, and the like 
may properly be put, and, if possible, 


settled. 
3. Criticism of the contents of the books an after 
thought: } Gas @ os se ws (ess eehicey inte oO 


(i.) Criticism founded on antecedent prejudices 
and prepossessions valueless. 

(ii.) Criticism of this kind may best be described 
as riotous criticism. 

(iii.) It will be discredited, and the record of the 
books will be accepted as closing the 
question of the supernatural in religion, 


LECTURE III. 


I. THE ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC 
CHURCH) .) . 6 ow a hath en 


(1) The Church made for man; not man for the 
Church. 

(2) The Church idea excludes temporal ends and 
objects, deals with the spiritual and super- 
sensual, and is concerned about the things 
of God. 

(i.) Not a school of science or philosophy. 

(ii.) Not a society to secure social and temporal 
advantages, 

(iii.) Not in any sense a kingdom of this world, 
or for this world. 


II. THE PRESENT DISTRESS OF CHRISTENDOM THE 
RESULT OF FORGETTING THIS PRIMAL FACT. . 65 


Table of Contents Xili 


III. THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE SU- 
PERNATURAL ORDER TRACED IN THE DOC- 
TRINE, FELLOWSHIP, BREAKING OF BREAD, AND 
BRAVES ees aa ee 1 aE sl Sk a) Se 


(r) Under every head the supernatural is touched. 


BV, LPHE DOCERINE. 5) .0;. =e 


(1) Contained and ea bot in the Creed. 

(i.) Meaning of the word Credo. 

(ii.) Implying things that are not seen and can- 
not be proved by human logic or experi- 
ment. 

(iii.) Modern hatred of creeds ; its cause. 

(iv.) Comparison of the process of instruction by 
the Creed with the methods of human 
teaching. 

(v.) Application to Christ: He must be capable 
of intelligible description; if not, He must 
belong not to the realm of fact and truth, 
but to that of sentiment and subjective 
impression. 

(2) The Creed presents the truth to the intellect 
and the heart, and guards it from loss by 
crisp, clear statements and definitions. 


V. THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. . 


(1) Implies, throughout, supernatural forces and 
powers not of this world. 
(2) Holy Baptism. . . aii Set Sy Lats 
(i.) Does not ae to worldly advantages 
and temporal success ; 
(ii.) But to objects far away. 
(iii.) Makes men citizens of a spiritual kingdom, 
and introduces to an immortal career. 


PAGE 


68 


69 


80 


XIV Table of Contents 





(3) Holy Confirmation. . . «igs CONS 

(i.) No trace of the worldly or + the temporal. 

(ii.) Carries a grace, gift, and power of the Holy 
Ghost. 

(4) Holy Matrimony, = . «sae 

(i.) Not a secular contract only. 

(ii.) A natural relation is lifted up to a higher 
place, and blessed with a gift of grace. 

(iii.) Horrible results of denying the exaltation 
of natural things by divine power : divorce, 
remarriage, consecutive polygamy, com- 
munistic views, degradation of society 
and destruction of individual life. 

(5) Holy Communion. . > 2 

(i.) The Bread which comes from heaven. 

(ii.) The Bread which nourishes to everlasting 
life. 

(iii.) Reviews and attests the fact of sin, the need 
of atonement, the mediatorial work of 
Christ. 

(iv.) No promise of any temporal or secular 
result. 

(v.) Falsehoods about the nature of Holy Com- 
munion, indicating a wish to divest it of 
any supernatural quality or meaning. 

(vi.) Witness of the Liturgy to the supernatural 
in its character as a dramatic and pictorial 
communication of the sacrifice of the 
Lord. 

(a) The Kyrie Eleison. 
(4) The Agnus Dei. 

(c) The Susrsum Corda. 
(2) The 7risagion. 

(e) The Canon. 


83 


86 


Table of Contents XV 


PAGE 
(Gy ABalpiOrders os \ ot ss 94 

(i.) A note of the kingdom. 

(ii.) The ministry not a human calling, but a 
ministry of reconciliation, a link between 
two worlds. 

Gii.) The Priesthood of the Church an office ‘ 
conferred by God the Holy Ghost for the 
help and salvation of man. 

VI. THE SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH A WITNESS THROUGH- 

OUT TO SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. NO SIG- 

NIFICANCE ASIDE FROM THIS... . . . « Q7 


VII. ConcLusion. Sigh wireabcth Toke oeted ce ot eae UA 103 








THREE GUARDIANS OF SUPER- 
NATURAL RELIGION. 


EECTURE 1. 


As Lecturer on the Bishop Bedell Founda- 
tion, I must begin by thanking you for the 
patience with which you have borne a long de- 
lay. More than two years have passed since 
I was honored with the invitation to deliver 
these lectures; I deeply regret that I was 
twice prevented from meeting my engagement 
at the time fixed. From the first I had mis- 
givings as to my ability so to discharge this 
duty as to help the brethren and edify the 
Church; but when your invitation reached 
me, we were approaching the end of the nine- 
teenth century, then attenuated, and worn 
out, and ready to pass away, and it occurred 
to me that the time would be opportune for 


words suited to the descent of the curtain on 
I 


2 Three Guardians of 


one more act of the drama of this strange and 
perplexing world. That time has passed. 
Having crossed the threshold, we are within 
another cycle of history, nor is the hour apt 
for valedictory speech, such as I had in mind; 
yet, in my own case, a personal consideration 
comes in, to which you must be kindly indul- 
gent. ‘‘ Nearas is the end of day, so too is 
the end of life,’’ saith Launcelot Andrews of 
blessed memory; and for myself, looking back 
on threescore years and ten of pilgrimage, and 
forty-nine in Holy Orders, it seemed then, 
and seems now, that one in my position might 
welcome an opportunity of bearing testimony 
to an ancient faith and old truths, more true, 
more real, to him than ever, and to convic- 
tions confirmed by each event of life, and 
more precious for the opposition which they 
encounter. We sometimes hear of fossils 
among the clergy, hide-bound ecclesiastics, 
men who have stopped growing and walk with 
eyes shut—complimentary epithets applied to 
those of us who believe that the Gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ is an everlasting Gospel; 


Supernatural Religion 3 


that whatever else may be in flux, the Word 
of God is not in flux, and that not one jot or 
tittle of the Catholic Faith can pass away. 
To confess ourselves of the company of those 
at whom the shafts of satire are directed is a 
pleasure, and not a pain; while an occasion to 
bear witness to the Eternal Son of God, the 
system of the Christian religion, and the in- 
defectibility of the Church seemed one which 
ought not to be lost. 

No one can tell what the twentieth century 
is to bring forth; as little can it be doubted 
that wonderful things are in the near future. 
Among the signs of the times is a very great 
and widespread interest in religion. That is 
not, in itself, a sign of health; it may coexist 
with doubt, uncertainty, and delusion. The 
Athenians were credited by St. Paul with an 
extraordinary interest in religion, and yet 
they had gods many, and lords many, and were 
densely ignorant; nor could the higher minds 
among them agree on anything better than to 
set up an altar to the Unknown God.' Is it 


1 Acts xvii. 23. 


4 Three Guardians of 


not thus in a measure with the people to-day ? 
Consider the aspect of the times, the scope of 
modern discussion. Changes are taking place 
with great rapidity in the religious field; old 
things are passing away, new things crop up; 
the air rings with prophecy of movements 
more radical than any now afoot. Christ, the 
Bible, the Church—these are the subjects of 
incessant debate; while in each case we ob- 
serve a strenuous effort at readjustment of 
ideas on the assumption that the discoveries 
of science and the conclusions of philosophy 
render it impossible for intelligent men to 
believe what Christians have taught and held 
and still hold. 

The line of this proposed readjustment is 
significant; in each instance the aim would 
seem to be to take out of the subject of the 
process the quality which constitutes its life. 
It is proposed to clear the Bible of everything 
offensive to modern thought, and treat it as 
literature merely; as a book like other books, 
but not as the work of writers inspired by the 
Holy Ghost. The Church can no longer be 


Supernatural Religion 5 


regarded as a divine institution, but as a so- 
ciety, like others, of human origin; shapeless, 
incoherent, composed of scattered groups of 
people styled Christians, yet agreeing in few 
points of faith, and disagreeing in every point 
of discipline and order; the main business of 
the said society being to inculcate morality, 
promote benevolent feeling, and ameliorate 
social conditions. As for Christ, He is not 
to be considered any longer as the Christ of 
dogma and theology, but rather as a widely 
diffused and impersonal influence, making for 
philanthropy, individual improvement, and 
general reform; not as a Person capable of 
being described and identified, like the mock 
Christ of the Creeds, but as a centre of ethical 
tendency; nor should mention be made any 
longer of such superstitious notions as those 
of a virgin birth, an atonement for sin, a lit- 
eral resurrection, and a return to judge the 
world in righteousness. 

Such is the line on which the proposed re- 
adjustment of Christianity is to proceed; and 
looking at it closely, we are struck by some- 


6 Three Guardians of 


thing very peculiar in the plan. Evidently 
there is in the old conceptions of Christ, the 
Church, and Revelation something very offen- 
sive to the thought of the age; something 
which must be eliminated in order to prevent 
the modern, worldly man from breaking with 
Christianity; and further examination shows 
what that obnoxious element is. No terms 
are more distasteful to the ear of the read- 
justers than dogmatic theology and supernat- 
ural religion; at the sound of the words they 
grieve and are thrown into wrathful displeas- 
ure. I donot hesitate to say that the stimulus 
to the efforts to readjust Christianity will be 
found in a deep-seated hatred of what the word 
‘‘supernatural’’ implies. It is nothing short 
of hate, however veiled under the mask of lib- 
eralism, which voices the prediction, that 
within a short time Supernatural Religion will 
be discarded throughout the civilized and en- 
lightened world. 

And next we note another striking phenom- 
enon—the rise of new systems intended to 
meet the changed conditions of the time; ten- 


Supernatural Religion ‘4 


tative projets, experiments in religion manu- 
facture, mainly philosophical; in part revivals 
of systems in vogue among the pagans, in part 
dilutions of Christian teaching; strange crea- 
tions, showing signs and wonders, attractive 
to the curious and credulous, and even to per- 
sons who, confused and upset, are longing 
for peace and rest. This is the modern pro- 
gramme. It begins with the assumption that 
the world has outgrown Supernatural Reli- 
gion, and that the old Gospel must go. De- 
mands for a religion of some sort, however, 
must be met, and therefore it is proposed, re- 
taining the name of Christianity, to exhibit a 
new Bible, a new Church, and a new Christ— 
a Bible in which is no more of inspiration than in 
the Zend-Avesta or the Koran; in the writings 
of Homer and Hesiod; of Tacitus and Livy; of 
Plato, Seneca, Bacon, or Emerson; a Church 
disclaiming authority or supernatural powers; 
a Christ such as the enlightened age can ac- 
cept without strain on the reason or loss of 
self-respect. Let us not misunderstand or 
misrepresent the position of our learned and 


8 Three Guardians of 


eager friends. The world is not to be left 
without a religion, or sacred books, or a 
Christ. But the new religion will be natu- 
ral, rational, and progressive; and the books, 
strained clean of superstitious ingredients, will 
be treated like other books; and the Christ 
will be an improvement on Him of the Creeds 
and theology; a Man of the remote past, re- 
alized to us only as a widespread, broadly felt, 
impersonal influence, making for good, with- 
out regard to pedigree, genealogy, history, or 
name. 

So are the lines drawn between the old 
faith and the new learning; and to stand 
in the face of this revolutionary programme, 
in defence of that religion which we have re- 
ceived from our forefathers in Christ, and hold 
in trust for the salvation of man, appears to 
me to be the duty of the hour. And yet this 
duty should be discharged in the spirit of that 
Master whom we follow, with deference to the 
progress of the age so far as it is real and in 
the right direction, and with a great yearn- 
ing for the scattered and bewildered among 


Supernatural Religion 9 


us, and a wish that we knew how to help 
them. 

And here be it observed that there are 
among ourselves some who should not only be 
pitied, but closely watched; brethren of our 
own who help the enemy; though, I feel sure, 
not knowing what they do. No one more dis- 
tinctly aids and abets the common foe than he 
who, in fear of being considered illiberal and 
behind the time, compromises with that foe 
by one concession after another until little or 
nothing is left to concede. There are some 
among us who, while sorrowfully deprecating 
a coming catastrophe, hasten its approach by 
their irresolution. What shall be said of a 
man who, though sworn before God and on 
the Holy Gospels to teach what the Church 
has always taught, stands like a reed shaken 
by the wind, seeking, yet not knowing, how 
to reconcile his ordination oath with a secret 
appetency for the gospel of progress as taught 
in the modern metaphysical and rationalistic 
schools ? 

Since the word ‘‘ supernatural’’ seems to 


10 Three Guardians of 


carry in it the leading issues of the day, and 
since our religion without the supernatural 
element would be no more than a desiccated 
remainder of what once was, but had ceased to 
be, I claim that the subject is urgent. More- 
over, it may be possible, and I think it is, to 
trace the abhorrence of the term to its source. 
Movements in the social sphere are the out- 
come of teachings which quietly prepare for 
the result. The current discontent of the la- 
boring classes, their indifference to religion, 
their loss of belief in a future life, the dreams 
of the communist, the sanguinary crimes of 
the anarchist—these are, in fact, the outcome 
of the work of men who for years have been 
studying, writing, and quietly propagating 
their theories of social reform unnoticed by 
the public. It is so with movements in the 
religious sphere. Current discontent with the 
old faith, desire for readjustment on radical 
lines, are traceable to their source; they are 
due to the revival and spread of a philosophy 
well known to students and attractive to the 
natural mind—a philosophy which identifies 


Supernatural Religion II 


God and the universe, annuls the distinction 
between the human and the divine, and re- 
gards men as the product of evolution in a 
primal and universal substance working ac- 
cording to some unknown law. If we mistake 
not, the effort at a reconstruction of Christian- 
ity by theorists, whether within or outside of 
the Church, is the outcome of a quiet, silent 
leavening of modern thought with the princi- 
ples of that philosophy, and large numbers of 
persons, without being aware of the fact, have 
been inoculated with the germs of that specu- 
lative scheme, and are now under its weird 
and fascinating influence. It is therefore pro- 
posed to speak of supernatural religion, to 
define the term, to consider certain divinely 
constituted agents for its defence and propa- 
gation, to show the solemn obligations of the 
ministry of the Church to maintain it as the 
power of God and the wisdom of God, and to 
do this with reference to the subtle force 
which is now engaged against the souls of men 
and the life of Christianity. 

The question about supernatural religion 


12 Three Guardians of 


contains the Credenda and Agenda in their 
entire range, with whatever makes a Christian 
man and differentiates him from other men. 
It includes our relations to God, the lower or- 
ders of creation, society, self; to this world, 
and if there be another, to that which is to 
come. It is a primary question, the question 
of all questions, determining our views of 
morals, faith, and worship; our conclusions as 
to the origin, past history, present position, 
and future of the human race. The character 
of the assault on those who believe in sucha 
religion indicates the temper of the assailants 
and the value of the interests at stake. Some 
break forth into jibe and jest, mocking at the 
sound of the word as the Athenians mocked 
when they heard of a resurrection of the dead. 
Others, more serious, resort to argument, en- 
deavoring to show that there is no distinction 
between creature and Creator, the human sub- 
stance and the divine, God and man. This is 
the gist of the philosophy to which I referred 
a little while ago; and I shall try to show to 


? Acts xvii. 32. 


Supernatural Religion 13 





what it would lead if its truth could be estab- 
lished, and how vital are the issues between 
its uncertain statements and negations and 
the clear-cut definitions and fearless assertions © 
of the Catholic faith—so vital that the faith 
must kill the philosophy or the philosophy 
will kill the faith. To quote the words of an 
English theologian, ‘‘ Christianity is saturated 
with the supernatural’’; take that away, and 
Christianity would fall as dead as the corpse 
which they wrap in grave clothes and lower 
into the tomb. Yet that would be the end if 
it could be established that there is but one 
substance in the universe; that man, and every 
one that ever bore the form of man, are prod- 
ucts of an evolutionary movement in that sub- 
stance; and that God and man, for all present 
and practical purposes, may be considered as 
interchangeable terms. 

And here we need a definition, which I shall 
try to give, not in the terms of metaphysics, 
but in words intelligible to the people, avoiding 
verbiage, which darkens counsel and confuses 
thought. The word “‘ supernatural’? as we 


14 Three Guardians of 


use it conveys a simple idea. It means above 
nature. And by nature the plainer folk under- 
stand the universe, so far as it is accessible to 
our observation. The physical process, the 
worlds above us in the depths of space, the 
solar system, the earth and its various king- 
doms, man considered as a tenant of the 
earth, the laws and forces by which the vast 
system is governed and kept in order—this 
is what the average person means when he 
speaks of nature, and such a definition will 
suffice to point some questions and bring 
some matters sharply to the front. 

Is there anything beyond this, outside of it, 
above it? Is there aught else, not of this 
natural order, substantially distinct from it, 
which may impinge on, interfere with, or in 
any wise affect its conditions? Is there, out- 
side of this stupendous process of which we 
speak as nature, any power of which account 
must be made? Is there any Personal Agent, 
able to retard, accelerate, or modify the move- 
ments of the spheres, suspend existing laws, 
and impose others at will? Is there, in short, 


Supernatural Religion 15 


an intelligent First Cause and Author of what 
we see, diverse from the world, never com- 
mingled or coagulated with other forms of 
being, not to be identified or confused with 
the universe as if part and parcel thereof? 
And, to speak of man particularly, is he alone 
in the system in which he exists, having no re- 
lation to any powers or persons invisible, for 
the reason that no such powers or persons ex- 
ist; one in substance with the things on this 
planet and beyond its orbit; of kin to beast, 
bird, fish, plants; but without a Creator, Fa- 
ther, Friend, and living in and to himself 
alone? 

Answer these questions and you have an- 
swered the question of the day. The concep- 
tions of the universe and our own place in it 
part asunder, and now is disclosed the secret 
cause of the prevalent efforts to overthrow our 
faith in God and Christ. For if there be noth- 
ing above nature, then all is nature and na- 
ture is all. And if nature be all, the word 
‘““ God,’’ as we Christians use it, isa misleading 
term, for nature and God are one. And if 


16 Three Guardians of 


this be so, it follows that man, being part and 
parcel of nature, is part and parcel of God, 
and that God is man and man is God. The 
denial of the supernatural would appear to 
involve that conception of the universe com- 
monly known as pantheistic. It is no re- 
proach to any one to call him a pantheist, for 
pantheism is a philosophy of great antiquity, 
with a roll of eminent names as its professors; 
let us add that it gives the only rational ex- 
planation of the universe if Christian dogma 
be not true. At the same time we insist that 
it is impossible to reconcile the positions of 
pantheistic philosophy with the Articles of the 
Christian Faith. Yet this is what the loose 
and broad religious teachers about us seem to 
be trying to do. The relation between the 
neo-pantheist and the readjuster of Chris- 
tianity is close, the resemblance startling. I 
do not go so far as to identify these two actors 
on the stage of our time, but I do say that 
they may be considered cousins-german, and 
that they seem to be working towards a com- 
mon end, and that this will appear when we 


Supernatural Relegzon 17 


place side by side the propositions of the 
pantheistic creed and the new meanings which 
it is desired to read into the symbol of the 
Catholic faith. 

Let us run over certain propositions, with- 
out assigning to each its place, but with a 
view to see whether they are not so mutually 
in accord that the man who holds any one of 
them is not out of touch with him who holds 
any other. Some of them are distinctly pan- 
theistic; some are affirmed by the professors 
of that neo-Christianity which aims at taking 
the place of the Gospel; but each may be 
taken as consistent with all the rest. 

first. There is no God essentially distinct 
from the universe, the earth, and man. 

Second. All things are in flux, evolving and 
developing from form to form under a mys- 
terious law with which no outside power inter- 
feres, or ever has interfered, and over which 
men have no control. 

Third. Man must have come up from lower 
forms of material life by a process of evolution 


which has made him all that he is to-day. 
2 


18 Three Guardians of 


fourth. God is in all things that exist, and 
substantially identical with them. 

Fifth. There can be no such thing as sin, 
because men, whatever they do, are simply 
following a law which ever works for good; 
and the slight amount of friction that may oc- 
cur involves no guilt, and is corrected in the 
general movement forward. 

Sixth. Death is neither a penalty nor a pun- 
ishment, but a step in one harmonious proc- 
ess, a means of advance, and the mark of a 
change to something higher and better. 

Seventh. As there is no such thing as sin, in 
the theological sense of the word, there can 
be no need of an atonement. 

Eighth, Religion is the natural outcome of 
fear or desire, the alarm of the credulous, or 
the emotions of the enthusiast. All religions 
have a common origin; none can rightly claim 
superiority to the rest; each is the best for 
those who profess it; none has authority over 
its professors, beyond what they may be 
pleased to concede; the people are at all times 
free to correct, amend, and remodel their re- 


Supernatural Religion 19 


ligions, and they ought to do so according to 
the demands of the age, the conditions of so- 
ciety, and the changes in human thought. 

Ninth. The reason is the sufficient guide to 
men, the ultimate authority in religion, and 
the supreme power in human judgment and 
action. 

Tenth. There is no kingdom greater than 
that of this world, nor any king greater than 
man, who, sitting in the temple of gods once 
potent, but now disgraced and expelled, shows 
himself that he is God. 

Eleventh. There are no interests superior to 
those which centre in this world and this pres- 
ent life. 

Twelfth. There is no personal immortality; 
humanity alone is immortal. 

Thirteenth. As for Christ, it must be held 
that such Christ or Christs as have been or 
may hereafter be seen among us were men 
like ourselves, advanced by virtue and charac- 
ter above their fellows, and in one instance 
exceptionally far above them, yet with no 
more of divinity than there is in us, who are 


20 Three Guardians of 


also the sons of God; and that the particular 
individual known in history as Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth was an outcome of natural evolu- 
tion, that he was long since buried and turned 
to dust, and is now influential only through 
the impression made by his incomparable life, 
his profoundly spiritual teaching, and his lofty 
example. 

Fourteenth, and finally. Of sacred books and 
writings: all religions have works of that class. 
These should be regarded as literature of the 
times in which they were written; uninspired 
productions, subject to criticism, not only as 
to form, but as to entire contents; to be ap- 
preciated by each age according to its lights, 
and valued at whatever estimation scholars 
may put on their merits. 

Consider these propositions one by one. I 
think it may be said that Catholics will deny 
them all, that pantheists will assent to them 
all, and that the leaders in the quest for an 
improved and revised Christianity will accept 
some and reject others. In the case of par- 
tial acceptance we trace the near relationship 


Supernatural Religion 21 


to radical philosophy. To force this fact on 
those who wish to revise, yet hope to save 
Christianity, is a duty to them and to our- 
selves. What they hold and would stealth- 
ily inject into the Catholic Creed and the for- 
mularies and articles of religion on the sub- 
ject of the Deity of our Lord, the Incarnation, 
Sin, the Atonement, the Church, the Holy 
Scriptures, and the origin and progress of hu- 
manity accords, or may easily be harmonized, 
with the philosophy of pantheism, and is abso- 
lutely irreconcilable with the Faith as declared 
in the great General Councils, taught by the 
Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and trans- 
mitted to our day. He that hath ears to hear, 
let him hear. In support of our thesis we refer 
to current literature of the serious kind—to 
review, magazine, and daily journal; to essays 
on the need of new standards, new creeds, 
new statements of doctrine; to those depress- 
ing novels written in the interest of revolu- 
tionary movement within the Church. Every- 
where the careful reader may trace the influ- 
ence of the neo-pantheism, and perceive how 


22 Three Guardians of 


deeply it has infected those who once were 
sound and orthodox believers, unsettling them 
from the base, and turning some of them into 
destructives who profess an intention to re- 
construct, but give, so far, no sign of the way 
in which they are going to do it. 

Nor is the decadence observable only in the 
place of the lecturer and popular preacher; it 
shows itself as clearly in the general aspects of 
society, in the alienation of great masses from 
the Church, in the growing neglect of public 
worship, and the secularization of the Lord’s 
Day; in the concentration of effort on tem- 
poral ends, and the sluggishness of Christians 
in aggressive mission work and discipline of 
the individual life; in restlessness under the 
laws of Christ relating to marriage, home du- 
ties, the authority of parents, and the instruc- 
tion of the young in the knowledge and love 
of God. All this runs back into the ques- 
tion about supernatural religion. A frightful 
game of hazard is played to-day, with these 
stakes to be lost or won—the truth about 
man, his origin, substance, and destiny; the 


Supernatural Religion 23 


life of man as an individual, including the 
personal relations and duties around, above, 
below; the life of man in the aggregate, 
termed society; the general trend of public 
movements; the meaning of history; the 
value of religion; the character and mis- 
sion of the Church; the place of the Bible 
among the sacred books of the nations; the 
relations of Christianity to modern civilization 
and outlying heathenism; the status of the in- 
dividual man, his hopes and fears, his joys 
and sorrows, his limitations, and whatever 
may be learned about 


“the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world.” 


For all these the old Church has her at- 
tested statements, and philosophy its equally 
distinct affirmations and denials; and between 
them is to come one knows not what, but 
some new and strange compound, professing to 
reconcile what cannot be reconciled, and to 
adjust the claims and position of the Holy 
Gospel and the human philosophy by a proc- 


24 Three Guardians of 


ess destructive of all that has been done thus 
far for man’s salvation and God’s glory under 
the glorious banner of the faith once for all 
delivered to the saints. 

But can this be done? Can such a disaster 
occur? I trow not, until every promise of God 
has been broken, and everything believed by 
us proved false. The truth is guarded under 
the promise, ‘‘ Upon this rock will I build my 
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it.”’ 

Let me repeat what has been said thus far: 
the current ideas about a Bible without in- 
spiration, a Church without authority in 
controversies of faith, and a Christ incapa- 
ble of being described or defined are inti- 
mately related to the philosophical theories 
that God and nature are substantially one, 
and that everything has come of natural causes 
by way of evolution and development, with 
no outside interference, and no superintending 
personal agent to guide, control, and modify 
the process. Moreover, recalling and adopt- 
ing as our own the statement that Christian- 


Supernatural Religion 25, 


ity is saturated with the supernatural, I invite 
you to a survey of religion from our stand- 
point, and an appreciation of the witness 
borne in our system of teaching, doctrine, 
and discipline to the truth of that statement. 
Proposing in the following lectures to speak 
of Christ, the Bible, and the Church in their 
office as witnesses to the truth, I shall add 
a few words and then bring this lecture toa 
close. 

If the truth which is to make us free had 
been left to the custody of man in his actual 
state, with a reasoning faculty impaired by an 
original flaw, uncertain in its processes and 
fallible in its conclusions, a limited range of 
knowledge, strong prejudices, and an over- 
weening conceit of his own powers, its stay 
among us would have been brief. But God 
has done better for us than that. He has not 
only made known to us the knowledge of His 
Will, but has provided the means to save it 
from loss among the broken lights of time. 

By a supernatural religion we mean one that 
is not of man, but of God; not the resultant 


26 Three Guardians of 


of natural causes, but the gift of a power 
above nature; a religion which, as _ super- 
natural, has authority over the natural 
man; authority over him through the whole 
range of his being, physical, intellectual, 
and moral; a law for the body, a rule for 
thought, a code for moral action; which brings 
him light in all his conditions—light for the in- 
tellect, guidance in morals, salutary discipline 
for the lower nature. There is but one such 
religion; its name is the Gospel, of which St. 
Paul spoke thus: ‘‘I certify you, brethren, 
that the gospel which was preached of me is 
not after man. For I neither received it of 
man, neither was I taught it, but by the reve- 
lation of Jesus Christ.’’! The alternative is 
a religion evolved out of man’s consciousness, 
carrying no authority higher than his own, 
and giving no help or light but that derived 
from within. 

That Gospel of which we speak is amply 
safeguarded. First, we have a written docu- 
ment, or series of documents, of various dates 


1 Gal. i, 12. 


Supernatural Relrgion 27 


and authorship, and constituting a revelation 
from Him in whom we live and move and 
have our being. Secondly, an organized so- 
ciety exists among us, described as “‘a king- 
dom not of this world,’’! in which men are in- 
structed in all that concerns them as heirs of 
immortal life; wherein they learn a wisdom 
above that of the temporal and secular sphere,? 
and beyond scientific, economic, or political 
lines. Thirdly, One is present here on earth, 
divine and human at once; of this world and 
also of another; uniting in His person the 
finite and the infinite; adds, reléws, adzat- 
pitas, acvyyvtes,; Himself a mystery, and 
yet the Fact of all facts; inscrutable as to sub- 
stance, origin, and person, yet very man; of 
us, but not from us; over all, blessed for ever, 
and yet zz us; the hope of glory, the Way, the 
Truth, the Life.’ 

We believe that these witnesses cannot be 
silenced. Christ, the Church, and the written 
Word are God’s pledges to the human race 

1 St. John xviii. 36. ar Gor. ii. 6: 
$ Col. ii. 27 compared with Rom. ix. 5. 


28 Three Guardians of 


that the true light shall not be put out, how 
hard soever the darkness may contend against 
it. But their worth to any man depends upon 
his ability to see what is their office, and what 
the qualification to fulfil it. To the man of 
faith the witness suffices; to him who barters 
faith for a mental process of private judgment 
and tries his hand at 


‘ 


‘reconciling’’ God’s 
plain statements with his own opinions, it 
seems like no witness at all. We hear it said 
that supernatural religion will soon cease to 
find believers; and so it will when its safe- 
guards are despised. Nothing is needed to 
that end but to rob the three witnesses of 
their essential character; to make of the sa- 
cred books a collection of myths, legends, and 
fables, of novelettes, songs, and garbled his- 
tory; of the Church a secular society, useful 
chiefly, if not only, for ethical culture and so- 
cial improvement, and possibly for police duty 
among the ignorant and vicious; of Christ a 
great and holy man, reformer, social philoso- 
pher, moral exemplar, and no more; and the 
work is done. The witnesses to the super- 


Supernatural Religion 29 


natural are killed simply by killing the ele- 
ment of the supernatural in the witnesses. 
To me it seems the duty of the hour to resist 
the attempt to harmonize things incompatible 
—an inspired volume with mere literature; a 
Christ who is God with a Christ who is not; 
a Church which is a kingdom with a Church 
which is a republic; Catholic unity with sec- 
tarian divisions; obedience to authority with 
stubborn independence; Christian simplicity 
concerning evil with addiction to worldly lusts. 
Every proposal to bring together things mu- 
tually destructive ends in the sacrifice of the 
higher to the lower. Go into the favorite 
work of the day. Deliver the Word of God to 
be torn up leaf by leaf by cold-blooded critics; 
stand and look on in silence while the Church 
is transformed, for social and economic ends, 
into a lyceum, gymnasium, free library, and 
lecture hall; make no protest while your Lord 
Christ is degraded into a man like us, liable to 
error, capable of sinning, and divine only in 
the sense in which we are divine; deprecate 
statements as to His nature, person, and 


30 Three Guardians of 


offices, with a sneer at dogma and theology; 
and you have rendered a good service to those 
whose aim is to drive the old religion from the 
world. 

I am sure that many are doing this without 
knowing better; nay, even with an idea that 
they are doing God and religion a good turn; 
but it is not so. The range of this melancholy 
activity varies with the harsher or milder tem- 
per of the age. To the timid it may appear 
sometimes that God’s witnesses are in sorry 
plight, like those whom St. John beheld in his 
vision,! who prophesied, clothed in sackcloth, 
and against whom the Beast made war, and 
overcame them, and killed them, and their 
dead bodies lay in the street of the great city, 
which spiritually is called Sodom or Egypt, 
where also our Lord was crucified. But 
though they that dwell on the earth rejoiced 
over them, and made merry, and sent gifts 
one to another, as is natural when relieved 
from the restraint of the law of the Lord, 
yet did they rise again, and stood up, and 


1 Rev. xi. 3-II. 


Supernatural Religion ay 


great fear fell upon the world which had re- 
jected their testimony. We believe that our 
witnesses cannot be killed; that the Bible will 
come out of the furnace of criticism more pre- 
cious and better appreciated than ever; that 
the Church will be reunited and resume her 


66 


ancient seat as ‘‘ Mother of saints, school of 
the wise, nurse of the heroic’’; that the 
Catholic faith in Christ will be professed every- 
where in the terms of the ancient Creeds; that 
the earth shall some day be full of the knowl- 


edge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 


32 Three Guardians of 


LECTURE 


THERE are subjects which embarrass by 
their extent. It is hard to decide how much 
may be considered, or how best to present 
that which time permits us to discuss. This 
is the case with the subject of the present lec- 
tures. If I did not believe that it is one of 
the utmost possible weight, and vitally related 
to the peace, safety, and happiness of man- 
kind and the progress of the race on right 
lines, I should have chosen some other theme. 

We do not admit that this is a speculative 
matter, suitable for discussion by wrangling 
theorists. It is urgent and practical; about it 
hang the issues of life and death. The last 
thing to undertake would be to prove by logi- 
cal process that a supernatural order exists. 
We announce that truth as one compelling 
assent. It does not rest on a series of argu- 
ments possibly fallacious; we are not required 


Supernatural Religion 33 


to introduce it in that fashion, any more than 
the theologian is bound to begin by a@ griorz 
demonstration that there isa God. Those are 
weighty words of Canon Mason: “‘It is no 
part of the duty of one who expounds the 
Christian doctrine to prove the existence of 
God. The attempt to exhibit such a proof 
belongs to a different department of study. 
The Christian Church does not in the first in- 
stance seek to convince men by argument that 
God is. Her voice is that of a witness, not of 
an uncertain inquirer. She bears testimony 
to what she knows; and instead of speculating 
how to establish God’s existence, she teaches 
men, on God’s authority, what God is.’’! It 
is so with the supernatural order. I do not 
seek to prove its existence like a problem in 
mathematics. It speaks for itself, in the rea- 
son, the conscience, the soul of man, the 
voices of all ages, the march of temporal 
events. My business is to show how the 
knowledge of the supernatural order is pre- 
served to us, how it is brought to us institu- 


1“< Faith of the Gospel.” 


34 Three Guardians of 


tionally, how we are connected with it, -and 
what would happen if the philosophers could 
demonstrate that it has no existence outside 
human thought. 

I speak as a Christian and a Churchman 
to Christians and citizens of the kingdom of 
heaven, knowing that in these last days peril- 
ous times have come, that the faith of some 
has been shaken, and that strange and new 
things have gained a hearing among the people. 
I wish to show that this Church is committed 
to the maintenance of the supernatural; that it 
would be impossible to eradicate it from her 
standards and her teaching without destroying 
the fabric of our spiritual house; that she is 
one on this point with all branches of the 
Catholic Church, and all bodies holding the 
general principles of the Gospel; and that in 
her standards and by her clergy she teaches, or 
intends to teach, that faith in every part of her 
system. If so, it follows that while the Church 
stands firmly on the old foundation, and so 
long as her clergy are faithful to their solemn 
oath to teach what she bids them teach, and 


Supernatural Religion 35 


nothing inconsistent with or contrary thereto, 
we have no cause to fear, however modern 
thought may work, whatever falling away 
there may be. 

That is the first thing that I propose to 
show; and then, having recalled to your mind 
the patent fact that this Church of ours, like 
the Christian religion to which it bears wit- 
ness, is saturated with the supernatural, we 
shall be moved to look attentively at one pain- 
ful subject to which a passing allusion may 
here be made. There are those among the 
clergy of this Church who, after having first 
set their hand to a promise, and then sworn to 
God and on the Holy Gospels that they will 
be faithful witnesses to that which the Church 
teaches as the Gospel of salvation, under press- 
ure from the spirit of the times and extraneous 
influences, lapse from their bounden duty, 
break plighted faith and oath, substitute the 
opinions of modern schools of thought for the 
dogmas of the Catholic faith, put new con- 
cepts into the words of Holy Scripture and 
the venerable Creed, and thus disqualify them- 


36 Three Guardians of 


selves as transmitters of that which they should 
have handed on to the children that are yet 
unborn. It is a terrible charge to bring, but 
one which we are compelled to make, in jus- 
tice to our own desire to cleanse and defend 
the Church, and save for ourselves and our 
descendants the faith once for all delivered to 
the saints. 

And so let me _ outline my intention: 
to take the Word of God and the Book of 
Common Prayer and note the witness borne 
to the everlasting Gospel; its clearness, its 
fulness, its simplicity; to compare it with the 
current views of religion among those who 
bring forth things new to supersede the old; 
and thus to move you, first, to hold fast the 
truth yourselves as you value your life and 
your soul, and next, to try to realize the con- 
sequence of conceding to any man within the 
Church, and especially to any one in her Or- 
ders, the right to think what he pleases, and 
do what he likes, and talk as he chooses, on 
subjects which, by exact definitions, are closed, 
and from which to depart is nothing short of 


Supernatural Religion 37 


rebellion and revolution. And here I shall 
speak first of the Word of God as contained 
in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments; of the place which the sacred 
books hold in our system, of the general drift 
of their teaching on the subject of the exist- 
ence of a supernatural world and beings of 
other spheres with whom we are connected 
and on whom we depend. 

The Holy Scriptures are venerated in the 
Church as THE WORD OF GOD; not as some 
evasively express it as containing the word 
of God, but as being the word of God to us 
His rational and intelligent creatures. They 
are accepted as a revelation of Himself, His 
acts, His will. They are also held by the 
Church to be inspired; to have been writ- 
ten under the special and direct influence 
of the Holy Ghost; the Spirit of God work- 
ing thereto on the mind and thought of the 
writer. ‘‘ All Scripture is given by inspira- 
tion of God.’’! And this would hold true, 
whatever changes might take place in our con- 


2 2 Tim. iii. 16, 


38 Three Guardians of 


ception of the form and scope of the writing. 
If it could be ascertained beyond all doubt 
that a given book ought to be regarded not as 
history, but as an idyl or an apologue, still 
should we insist that such idyl or apologue 
was so written under motion from the Holy 
Spirit. If it should ever be proved, in a way 
to admit no further question, that narratives 
which have stirred our souls and carried us to 
heights far above the troubled fields of earth 
were not, as we supposed, accounts of trans- 
actions occurring as described, but epics of 
soul history and experience, still must we be- 
lieve and teach that under these forms and in 
these descriptions God was making known to 
us something concerning Himself and us and 
the way of life. 

Thus have the Holy Scriptures been ac- 
cepted and revered in the Church from the be- 
ginning, as the Word of God, and inspired; 
not as mere literature, nor as books like other 
books, but as oracles communicated to the 
man of faith, and profitable for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in right- 


Supernatural Religion 39 


eousness. Everywhere, from the first, have 
they been thus venerated by the wise, as if 
in them could be distinctly heard the voice of 
God speaking to us from the heights above. 
Of the estimate of the Bible in the early 
centuries, all through the churches, no doubt 
exists, no doubt is possible. It is said that if 
the Bible should be lost, it could be recovered 
almost entirely from the quotations in the 
Fathers and doctors of old time. It has been 
held to be a living voice, a divine authority. 
In the C&cumenical Councils of the Church 
Catholic a copy of the Gospels was placed in 
the midst, as a symbol of the Sacred Pres- 
ence there. It is our glory and strength as 
a Church that we occupy on this point the 
ground of Christendom from the beginning. 
in Article Vi.; “Of ‘the Suffierency of ‘the 
Holy Scriptures for Salvation,’’ they are de- 
clared to contain all things necessary to salva- 
tion, and a list is given containing the names 
and number of the Canonical Books, that there 
may be no doubt or misunderstanding on that 
point, and no ground for dispute of contention 


40 Three Guardians of 


among us hereafter. The Word of God writ- 
ten by man under the inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost is a true and full revelation to man; 
oral tradition may not be cited, independent 
of the written Word, to establish dogma or 
doctrine contrary to that which it exhibits. 
In the place where the Bishops of our Church 
assemble in Convention or Council, a lectern 
is seen, bearing a copy of the Holy Bible. No 
man can be ordained to the Priesthood, nor 
can any be consecrated Bishop until he has 
signed this declaration: 

““I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament to be the word of 
God, and to contain all things necessary to 
salvation; and I do solemnly engage to con- 
form to the doctrines and worship of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States.” 

Thus far of the place and honor of the Holy 
Scriptures among us. And now we come back 
to our theme, and inquire what is their testi- 
mony to the existence of a supernatural world. 
On this point I would have you try to form a 


Supernatural Religion 41 


just idea of the way in which that witness is 
borne, and of the manner in which it is woven 
into the texture of the Books throughout. 
For they contain the history of the world and 
man from the standpoint of religion, and they 
assume and attest the supernatural from be- 
ginning to end. The first word in the first 
book, Genesis, is the name of God Eternal and 
Almighty; the last word in the last book, the 
Apocalypse, is the name of the Son of God 


A PE AUS 


Incarnate. ‘‘ In the beginning God, Even 
so, come, Lord Jesus.’’? Between those great 
phrases flows one continuous uninterrupted 
line of histories, prophecies, laws, songs and 
psalms of life, national records, individual 
biographies, in every part of which, distinctly 
or by implication, is predicated the existence 
of a Supernatural Being and an order above 
that of nature, with facts, inferences, and di- 
rections resultant from such superhuman, su- 
perterrestrial, unearthly relations to us; so 
that if the attempt were made to eliminate the 
supernatural element from those records not 


1 Gen. i. I. 2 Rev. xxii. 20. 


42 Three Guardians of 


so much as a page would be left. Not more 
bare of its original sense would such a revised 
and corrected Bible be than a skeleton which 
worms and serpents have cleaned even to the 
bone; nor yet would even the dry bones be 
left, but a dust, driven by the wind and blown 
about the channels of the desert hills. 

Note of this glorious and fearful name of 
the Lord our God that it is the name of a Per- 
sonal Being. It is impossible to imagine the 
God who appears in the books of the Old 
Testament as an impersonal force, a formless 
substance, a stream of tendency, a nonde- 
script. On the contrary, the Personality is 
the life, and apart from it there is none. The 
Scriptures contain nothing intelligible if they 
do not contain the record of the dealings of 
One Supreme Being with a world which He 
created in the beginning of time and has gov- 
erned ever since; the record of His dealings 
with men in their several relations, individual 
first, and then social; in their families, their 
tribes, their communities; His dealings with 
nations, monarchies, empires, in constant over- 


Supernatural Religion 43 


sight; with mortals one by one, of whom not 
one was ever without Him nor divided from 
Him as the source and continuance of his ex- 
istence. This is the Lord our God transcend- 
ent, immanent; nowhere mingled with the 
creature, nowhere apart from the creature. 
And in so presenting Him to loving faith and 
joyful knowledge the Holy Scriptures declare 
the truth of the supernatural state. This 
God, not a blind force like unto the idols of 
the heathen, which neither see nor hear nor 
speak; not a product of man’s imagination; 
no creature; not the subject of evolutionary 
process, but a supreme, original, unique Being, 
before all time, the source of all that exists in 
time; Himself the framer and imposer of what- 
ever laws, rules, or regulations are at work 
within the bounds of the universe; a Person 
so perfect that what we think we know of per- 
sonality is but the faint light of His own; 
thinking, seeing, knowing, loving; invisible; 
not one in substance with any but Himself, so 
that no creature can be said to be of one sub- 
stance with the Father, and that whosoever is 


44 Three Guardians of 


of one substance with the Father can be noth- 
ing less than the eternal, omnipresent, omni- 
potent God, this Lord Almighty, the source 
of life in us, but never substantially one with 
us—this is the personal, incomprehensible 
Being revealed to us in the books of the Old 
and New Testament, whose Name carries the 
assertion of a supernatural world. 

Holding therefore this primal truth of the 
absolute distinction between the eternal and 
incommunicable substance of God and the 
finite substance of His creatures, we also hold, 
with equal love and reverence, two truths con- 
cerning Him, each essential, and each bearing 
on the other; that of the Transcendence and 
that of the Immanence. These are the poles 
between which the universe holds its even, or- 
derly way. God is above nature; absolutely, 
eternally, essentially other than nature in His 
divine substance and personality; and yet God 
is in nature, not as of one substance with it, 
but by His power, grace, and love. Neither 
of these truths can be safely held without the 
other, for they compensate, and so make a 


Supernatural Religion 45 


perfect equilibrium. The transcendence of 
God, if held alone, separates Him from His 
works, and places Him afar off in remote and 
awful isolation. The immanence of God in 
ourselves and in everything that exists, if as- 
serted without its proper balance, results in 
the identification of God and nature, and im- 
merses Him in the lower world. These, then, 
must be held together, the impassable distinc- 
tion between God and man, and the close in- 
dwelling of God, through His Spirit, in every 
creature to which He has given life. Whoso 
holdeth these primal truths shall never fall. 
Such is He to whom the sacred Scriptures 
refer under the name of God. Everything 
said of Him implies supernatural dealing with 
us. The world was created by Him; how, we 
know not. The creative work is related; at 
every point God is present and acting. He 
sets laws to the universe which may not be 
broken—perhaps laws of development and evo- 
lution—but, at all events, laws which are simply 
the expression of His will, modes of working 
appointed by Himself as Supreme Ruler of the 


46 Three Guardians of 





universe. The history proceeds. The world 
has been always under the care and govern- 
ment of this personal God. A judgment on 
sin appears at a very early date. A family is 
called out; it receives a special revelation 
about God, and man’s duty to Him. It ex- 
pands to a nation of which He is the head; it 
remains through many changes His own pecu- 
liar people. They have a law, promises, a 
covenant, testimonies. He helps them; He 
chastises them when they forsake Him. There 
are, through this long story of centuries, in- 
stances innumerable of the working of super- 
natural power—visions, dreams, apparitions; 
commissions of judges, priests, prophets; the 
lifting up of kings and their casting down. 
All that occurs is tending meanwhile to one 
grand end—an end which casts all else into 
the shade—the entrance of Him by whom all 
things were made into this world, in visible 
form, and in the nature, not the person, of 
mortal man. 

And so these Scriptures bring before us an- 
other thing belonging to this same majestic 


Supernatural Religion 47 


order, the Incarnation of this Personal God. 
The “‘ mystery of the Holy Incarnation’’ is 
rightly so called. It defies the attempt to 
bring it within the range of natural laws; it 
cannot have come by evolution on the line of 
natural causes. A Divine Person—such is the 
faith and such the continuous confession of 
the Church—a Divine Person, eternal, incom- 
prehensible, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipo- 
tent, takes upon Him our flesh; He is born 
of a pure virgin; not of two parents, but of 
One, a maiden of the earth; the birth is 
effected by the power of the Holy Ghost, the 
Lord and Giver of life. That Incarnation is 
the central fact of everything contained in the 
Books. All previous statements and occur- 
rences lead up to it; all subsequent events 
flow from it. Faith in that Incarnation, as 
believed in by Christian people through all 
time, presupposes as indispensable a supernat- 
ural order, and powers outside those of natural 
law. And thus, as of the story of God in cre- 
ation and providence, and of the unspeakable 
wonder of His entrance as man into His own 


48 Three Guardians of 


world, the Bible witnesses to things beyond 
our ken, but not beyond our adoring faith. 
And such a book, bringing such truths to our 
ears, is much more than literature; it is nota 
book like other books; it brooks not to be so 
regarded or treated so lightly; it is the in- 
spired Word of God, revealing mysteries of 
both worlds, or it is practically nothing, nor 
worth the paper on which it is printed. 

But we have not done with the subject; 
there is more, much more, tocome. This God 
Incarnate, known in that humble state as Jesus 
Christ, never vacating the divine position, nor 
stripping Himself of His divinity, very God 
in His essential being, His omniscience, and 
His power; yet very man, embracing in His 
Person the Godhead in its infinite perfection 
and the manhood in its absolute verity of hu- 
man finiteness, weakness, and dependence, ful- 
fils a ministry and executes an office! The , 

?The recent reappearance of the theory of the Kenosis may 
be cited as another instance of the spasmodic efforts of the 
mind to escape from simple belief of revealed truth. How 


could Christ have been at one and the same time God and 
man? By way of a rational solution of the mystery, it is sug- 


Supernatural Religion 49 


ministry is prophetic; the office sacerdotal. 
As Prophet He teaches man the way of life, 
the truth which makes him free. As Priest 
He makes atonement for that which lies at 
the root of sorrow, suffering, and death—the 
sin of man. This mystery is in its way as 
great as either of those which have been al- 


gested that God the Son, when becoming incarnate, laid aside 
not only His glory, but also His Divine Attributes, Omni- 
science, Omnipotence, Omnipresence ; and that He must have 
done so, to be truly Man. It is the sequel to the humani- 
tarian heresy ; the result of persistently dwelling on the human 
side of Christ till the divine side is lost to view. It demands 
of those to whom it is proposed an exchange of the central 
truth of the Incarnation for a notion not only self-contra- 
dictory, but unthinkable. God cannot lay aside His Om- 
nipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence. To speak of a 
God who is omniscient at intervals, but not always; some- 
times omniscient and sometimes not; involves an absurdity. 
Yet this is predicated of our Blessed Lord, that He was God, 
but not what God must be to be God. And so it is said that 
the miracles were wrought, not by Him in the exercise of His 
Divine power, but by the Father acting on Him through the 
Holy Ghost; and that the wisdom of Christ was not that of 
the All-knowing and All-seeing Deity, but communicated in 
measure as the Father thought best; and that it was not till 
after the Resurrection that the words were true, ‘‘In Him 
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” The Kenotic 
Christ is an indescribable impossibility, unless there were two 
persons in Him. But to say that is to deny the Catholic 
Faith. 
4 


50 Three Guardians of 


ready presented. The atonement in the pre- 
cious blood, the offering of the Lamb of God 
to take away the sin of the world, how vastly 
above the lower ideas of patient endurance, 
exemplary lessons, and philanthropic sacrifice 
for others’ good! Altogether wonderful, sur- 
passing every other narrative, is the story of 
the Cross, whereon He made by His one ob- 
lation of Himself, once offered, a full, perfect, 
and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfac- 
tion for the sins of the whole world! Here is 
the mystery which more than any other has 
melted hearts, and brought dead souls to life, 
and led to God in penitence, and granted the 
peace which the world cannot give. Here is 
another case in which the Holy Scriptures tell 
of something far beyond the range of the nat- 
ural, and not to be appreciated by one who 
fails for any fault to see Him that is invisible 
and know the working of His love towards 
men. 

I proceed to another instance in which it is 
impossible for the denier of the supernatural 
to bring himself into accord with the Word of 


Supernatural Religion 51 


God—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
the dead. It was the chief theme of the first 
preaching by the Apostles. It is stated by 
St. Paul as the fact on the truth of which the 
Christian religion stands or falls: “* If Christ be 
not risen, our preaching is vain and your faith 
is also vain.’’! That is the keystone of the arch 
by which Christianity has spanned the troubled 
flood of temporal things; remove it, and the 
whole fabric falls and is lost in the roaring 
tide. 

The Resurrection as they preached and de- 
livered it was a literal fact; no moral revival, 
no post-mortem rehabilitation by way of influ- 
ence or power; but as the Catholic Church 
from the beginning has taught and held: 
““Christ did truly rise again from death, and 
took again His body, with flesh, bones, and 
. all things appertaining to the perfection of 
man’s nature; wherewith He ascended into 
heaven, and there sitteth until He return to 
judge all men at the last day.’’? The Resur- 
rection and the Ascension may be considered 


#' Cor. xv. 14. ? Articles of Religion, No. IV. 


52 Three Guardians of 


together, the latter being the continuation of 
the former. Tell us, then, by what natural 
law were these things accomplished? Were 
they not pure miracle? Were they not mani- 
festations of the divine agency, acts of the 
powers of the world above? These mysteries 
of the supra-material order have always been: 
held and loved in the faithful Church, and 
confessed as occurring ‘‘ according to the Scrip- 
tures.”’ 

We are brought to the latter days, Christ, 
risen and ascended, still lives, and abides 
with us through His Spirit. A system has 
been evolved out of this living stream of su- 
pernatural forces and agencies, which carries 
the wonder-working power down through all 
ages to the end of the world. The New 
Testament books follow the Old; they are the 
sequel, the completion; they are bound to- 
gether in one volume; and the character of 
these compositions is the same. Homogene- 
ous with the earlier records, they overflow 
with miracle, mystery, signs to faith, visions 
of another life; men wield powers which they 


Supernatural Religion 53 


do not comprehend; they are under supernat- 
ural laws; they look for another country;! they 
are dead to the world and alive unto God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord.* This system 
is known to us as the One, Holy, Catholic, 
and Apostolic Church, of which our spiritual 
mother is a living branch. But her life is es- 
sentially a life above that of nature; her man- 
hood is not that of the natural man; her chil- 
dren are citizens of a kingdom not of this 
world. Eliminate the supernatural from the 
books of the Old and New Testament, and 
they become mere secular literature. Elimi- 
nate the supernatural from the Church, and it 
becomes a mere school of ethical science, a 
system of philosophical speculation, or at best 
a benevolent society aiming at the advance- 
ment of the people in culture and the arts, 
and the amelioration of the conditions of this 
earthly life. 

I have made a brief review of the contents 
of our sacred Books. Among the wonders re- 
lated in them are possibly, or probably, things 

1 Heb. xi. rq-r6. 2? Rom. vi. g. 


54 Three Guardians of 


which might be explained on natural princi- 
ples; some signs which were wrought by men 
versed in occult philosophy, and possessing 
powers lodged somewhere in nature, and 
known to a secluded class of sages and ex- 
perts. Pharaoh’s magicians did things like 
those done by Moses, with their enchant- 
ments; and I have no disposition to deny that 
there was, and may be now, a reality of some 
sort in magic and the Black Art, as it was 
called, and in some of the phenomena investi- 
gated in our modern societies for Psychical 
Research. But allowing for cases capable of 
explanation on natural principles, there are 
others which peremptorily reject the effort to 
deal with them after that fashion; which must 
either be accepted as beyond the range of nat- 
ural law, or rejected as fable only; and of 
these are the Creation, the Incarnation, the 
Resurrection and Ascension, and the Pente- 
costal coming of the Holy Ghost. No sooth- 
sayer, astrologer, or magician could ever have 
accomplished such wonders; they are beyond 
the power of man, or of any agencies which 


Supernatural Religion 55 


work on matter and in time, under the limita- 
tions imposed by such relation. 

Our sacred Books, then, from the first word 
to the last, imply two worlds at the least 
—a lower world in which we live, a higher on 
which the lower is dependent. Their testi- 
mony is direct and uniform against the idea 
that man is alone in the universe, related to 
no person or persons above himself; substan- 
tially one with the physical process, all in all 
to himself; that there is no interference with 
him from the outside, and no possibility of en- 
countering hereafter any Being, now invisible, 
to whom he once had obligations and to whom 
he must give account. The testimony of the 
Scriptures is direct against the correctness of 
such an account of our state. It describes us 
as surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses, 
ruled by an Almighty Hand, borne on to a des- 
tiny indescribably greater than aught in view, 
and not for one instant of time, nor for any 
point in our existence, without the Presence, 
or beyond the sight and reach of that One in 
whom we live and move and have our being. 


56 Three Guardians of 


I spoke some time ago of the intense hostil- 
ity of a certain class among us to the idea of 
the supernatural in religion. That hostility 
explains the assault upon the Holy Scrip- 
tures; they are the chief obstacles in the way 
of the assailants of Christianity. The exist- 
ence of that record and its continuous accept- 
ance as an inspired account of the origin, na- 
ture, progress, and destiny of mankind is the 
insuperable barrier to the growth of heretical 
views on those subjects. It becomes an object 
therefore to break down faith in the authen- 
ticity and authority of those writings, and to 
show that they are unworthy of credence, hu- 
man compositions, ventures on credulity, and 
full of errors, mistakes, fables, and supersti- 
tion. And considering the activity of the 
processes most in vogue for that end, some 
words on the modern criticism of the Bible, as 
it is called, may be deemed a fitting conclu- 
sion of this lecture. 

Modern criticism of the Bible takes two 
lines: it deals with the text, it deals with the 
contents; it begins with study of manuscripts 


Supernatural Religion 57 


and versions; it proceeds to judgment on the 
matters therein set forth; and naturally, be- 
cause in the sacred Scriptures there are an out- 
ward form and an inward and spiritual mean- 
ing. The study of the outward form demands 
scholarship adequate to such investigation; the 
study of the inner spirit and concept requires 
a mind and soul attuned to spiritual things. 
The tyro in philology can give us nothing of 
value in the former line; the man of prejudices 
and prepossessions, and without the spirit of 
God in his heart, cannot interpret aright these 
messages of the Holy Ghost. 

Now as to the outward form, it is a legitimate 
subject of study. The originals of the sacred 
Books were lost long ago; we have transcrip- 
tions and versions, of the perfect accuracy of 
which it is no impiety to remain without com- 
plete assurance, and therefore we prize the 
work of the scholars who have done and are 
doing their best to give us a text as nearly per- 
fect as possible. Nay, this uncertainty would 
seem to prove fatal to the idea of verbal inspi- 
ration; for if, in the originals, every word was 


58 Three Guardians of 


dictated by the Spirit, a similar exercise of 
power ought to have been taken to secure the 
transmission of the documents without the 
slightest verbal change. We hold no such 
view of an inspiration extending to every 
word and line of the text. We do not know 
precisely what it was at first. But we have 
evidence sufficient to make us certain that we 
possess substantially the oracles of God; no 
other books in literature have been so thor- 
oughly tried, none have come forth more free 
from harm; and for this we are indebted to 
the critics, somewhat indifferently classed as 
lower in the scale, although their lessons have 
been more profitable than those of any other 
men. We are, moreover, willing to abide by 
their conclusions as to date, authorship, and 
proper place in the Sacred Canon when such 
conclusions shall have been established be- 
yond all reasonable doubt, and stand as the 
mature result of the learning of the age. 

But when, having the sacred Books before 
them in authentic form, another class of critics 
proceeds to estimate their value and the truth 


- Supernatural Religion 59 


of what they contain, wedemur. He who sets 
out to interpret these writings under the influ- 
ence of ineradicable prejudices and preposses- 
sions of his own is not competent to his task; 
he is disbarred by the limitations under which 
he works. What sort of a critic of such a vol- 
ume as this is he who begins by declaring that 
miracles are impossible; that there is no spir- 
itual world; that there is neither angel nor 
devil? What is his criticism worth? He 
cannot form an unbiassed judgment; his pre- 
judices are fatal to his success, his mental proc- 
esses are not free; and to follow them is to 
follow blind guides. Yet this is what we are 
observing every day. There is a lower criti- 
cism and there is a higher criticism; to 
which I should venture to add what I will 
style a riotous criticism; it is that in which 
they indulge who run riot through the Scrip- 
tures, eliminating here, altering there, expung- 
ing, correcting, changing, for the reason that 
they cannot see how what is stated can be 
true. Running amuck, like the Malays, they 
dash at everything miraculous or supernatural, 


60 Three Guardians of 


and drive at every statement which they can- 
not reconcile with modern, scientific, philo- 
sophical, or psychological conclusions. They 
assume that the writers had no inspiration 
essentially different from that enjoyed by Ho- 
mer, Socrates, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or 
Tennyson. St. Paul had his own private no- 
tions and views, which he expresses in his writ- 
ings as the modern essayist does; the chang- 
ing phases in the Apostle’s mind may be seen 
in a comparative study of his Epistles. St. 
John in his later works displayed the feeble- 
ness of garrulity of advancing years. Christ 
was not infallible; He might have sinned; He 
did not intend that the Last Supper should 
be continued as a perpetual memorial in the 
Church; the manifestation of tongues on Pen- 
tecost was but confused vociferation of un- 
known and unintelligible cries. Such are in- 
stances of the work of that riotous criticism, 
before which such numbers quail and lose 
their faith, as quiet people run before a shout- 
ing mob. And to this absolutely worthless 
criticism we oppose the testimony of the Uni- 


Supernatural Religion 61 


versal Church; the conviction of Christian peo- 
ple; and the assertion, which no one can ration- 
ally dispute, that the Bible is saturated with 
the supernatural and the miraculous from 
cover to cover, from the first verse of Genesis 
to the last of the Revelation. Now, if any one 
say that he cares nothing for these things; 
that his individual reason is a better judge 
than the collective intelligence of the Church; 
that the testimony of all ages could not con- 
vince him against his preconceived impres- 
sions; then we say, and less we cannot say 
than this, that there is no common ground 
between this extravagant critic and ourselves, 
and that we hold his persistent prejudices and 
his narrow dogmatism cheap against the secure 
and uniform judgment of the world. 

The recklessness of modern criticism will, 
we doubt not, cure itself; reaction against it 
has already begun; and after the storm we 
shall have peace and the assurance of the in- 
destructible nature of God’s truth and the 
permanence of the means by which it has 
been made known to man. 


62 Three Guardians of 





LECTURE II. 


OUR subject carries us to-day to a consider- 
ation of the next of those three agents by 
which God has ordered that the truth concern- 
ing the supernatural order shall be kept in the 
mind and heart of man—the Church, the King- 
dom not of this world, One, Holy, Catholic, 
and Apostolic, noted as the witness and keeper 
of the Faith, and the Mother of the Redeemed. 
Of her, GLORIOSISSIMA CIVITAS DEI, may I 
have grace to speak as I ought to speak. 

The Bible is not a book like other books. 

The Church is not a society like other socie- 
ties. 

If it were possible by dint of criticism to 
eliminate the supernatural element from our 
sacred Scriptures, their sanctity would depart 
from them, as the Shekinah departed from the 
Temple; and the Book, as we now receive it, 
would be lost as completely as the books 


Supernatural Religion 63 


which Tarquin rejected and the Sibyl burnt 
before his careless eyes. Let us consider what 
would become of the Church if the supernat- 
ural element should be eliminated from her 
system, and she were brought into the line of 
natural power and influence; if, instead of a 
divinely organized and conducted institution 
she were, or proved to be, after all, a society of 
human origin, carried on for secular uses, and 
managed by men only, without commission 
or authority from above this world. 

To speak first of the reason why; to account 
for the existence of the Church. The lan- 
guage used by our Lord in speaking of the 
Sabbath may be applied to the Church. We 
say that the Church was made for man, and 
not man for the Church. To man, when first 
fitted for the knowledge and enjoyment of 
God, was proposed a supernatural end. That 
is the beginning of theology. And the Church 
is an organization founded for the purpose of 
keeping that end always before him, and en- 
abling him to attain it, and so complete his 
destiny as an immortal being. 


64 Three Guardians of 


Therefore the Church idea, pure and simple, 
excludes temporal ends and objects, and deal- 
ing with the spiritual and supersensual, is con- 
cerned primarily about the things of God. 

It is not the object of the Church to teach 
men anything which can be learned by the use 
of their natural powers; therefore the Church 
is not a school of philosophy or science, nor 
was it intended that she should interfere with 
the work of science and philosophy within 
their legitimate spheres. 

It is not the object of the Church to modify 
or change social conditions, to advance civili- 
zation, nor to help men to the attainment of 
physical comfort, temporal advantages, wealth, 
health, or material prosperity. These things, 
relating to our natural state, are outside the 
range of Church existence. They are proper 
objects of pursuit, and men who have been 
enlightened and elevated by the spiritual forces 
of the Kingdom will be the better qualified for 
success and prosperity in the world while yet 
they sojourn here; but the Church does not 
propose them as objects of pursuit under her 


Supernatural Religion 65 


guidance; nay, though destitute of all these 
things, and poor in everything but faith and 
love, men may be rich and abounding in the 
fulness of the Kingdom. The Church has no 
direct concern with men except as the heirs 
of an immortal life, and pilgrims who seek a 
country beyond that from which they have 
been led forth. Everything in her polity, 
principles, and practical working refers to and 
aims at trans-terrestrial, supra-mundane ends; 
all begins, proceeds, terminates on parallels 
and meridians drawn about and running up to 
the throne of the Heavenly King. If this pri- 
mary truth had been kept in mind from the 
beginning, the aspect of Christendom would 
have been very different from that which it 
presents to-day, 


‘«By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” 


I know with what disgust these statements 
will be received wherever it is held that the 
Church should leave her proper field, and en- 
ter those of politics, social reform, and domes- 


tic economy; that her mission is mainly that 
5 


66 Three Guardians of 


of a mutual benefit society, a school of ethical 
culture, or a motor in the work of the eleva- 
tion of the lower classes. But it must be held 
for truth that wherever the leaders in the 
Church sink her spiritual character, wholly or 
in part, and direct her energies towards tem- 
poral. and secular ends, however valuable and 
attractive, they undermine her health and en- 
feeble the circulation of her heart. They are 
rewarded with none of those fruits which they 
might have reaped in the field which is the 
world. They see, as the result of their labors, 
neither the conversion of the individual soul 
nor the prosperity of society. 

The Lord, best qualified to speak correctly 
of His position and institutions, said, “‘ My 
kingdom is not of this world.’’ That is its 
true, its only true description: it is the 
‘“ Kingdom of Heaven.’’ Charities, benefits, 
helps, improvements in man’s condition will 
follow and cluster around it, as the pros- 
elytes and Gentiles were admitted to an outer 
court or two in the Temple; but these are 
not of the essence of the Church’s life. All 


Supernatural Religion 67 


the evils that have come upon her—and 
sore and heavy they are—are the outcome of 
forgetfulness of the primal truth about her 
nature, of confusing the two kingdoms, of 
making the Kingdom of Heaven a kingdom 
of this world. Sometimes her rulers have 
assumed the state and splendor of temporal 
princes, and immersed themselves in secular 
concerns, for which sad blunder there may 
have been the excuse that they were forced 
into it by civil revolution and changes in gov- 
ernments, by incursion of foreign foes hostile 
to Christianity, or by the decline and downfall 
of the powers which once kept the world in 
order and stayed the hand of violence and 
crime; but the final result was corruption in 
doctrine, discipline, and life. Such unhappy 
developments ‘occurred in the days of the long 
ago. To-day we see the same blunder re- 
peated, though in a modern fashion, in the pro- 
posal of temporal advantages and worldly bet- 
terment and prosperity as the chief concern 
of men, and dubbing philanthropic schemes 
with the title of an improved religion; of which 


68 Three Guardians of 


inexcusable error follow in their course a grow- 
ing indifference to the Gospel, a denial of the 
value of heavenly rewards, a rejection of the 
Kingdom and the King, and a loud cry for 
something new of which the description shall 
read, as the finger of Anti-Christ writes it 
large and clear, ‘‘ My kingdom is only of this 
world.”’ 

To develop this subject and bring out clearly 
the relation of the Church to the supernatural 
order, we must consider these four things in 
her: the doctrine, the fellowship, the breaking 
of bread, and the prayers.! It is a venerable 
and an apostolic summary, and sufficient for 
our purpose. Under every head the super- 
natural is implied, and this in each is held, de- 
fended, and realized to us, and to so much of 
society as will hear and follow. The dogmatic 
faith of the Church, the government of the 
Church, the sacramental rites of our religion, 
and the Liturgy represent, assert, contain, im- 
part powers and riches not of this world, but 
of the world to come. And it seems to me 


? Acts ii. 42. 


Supernatural Religion 69 


that it should be accounted an unspeakable 
privilege and honor to be in trust with things 
such as these and to be set apart to present 
them to the age in which we live. 

First, of the Doctrine. It is contained in 
the Creeds—those Creeds which have been for 
ages in use everywhere throughout the Chris- 
tian world. The first word in each is the word 
‘“CREDO.’”’ It is understood, if not formally 
repeated, before every separate affirmation in 
the venerable formularies, “‘ I believe.’’ How 
great the import of that word! It is as much 
as to say, “‘I do not see, I do not under- 
stand.’’ Of what can such a word be used, 
except of things beyond the range of sight, 
beyond the process of man’s understanding— 
in short, beyond the natural order ? 

Hope is implied here also, and love; so that 
to say, ‘‘I believe,’’ is like saying, ‘‘ I assent 
to the mystery of God, and as I hope for sal- 
vation, I do so confess; and I love to have it 
so. I love the truth, whatever it be, which 
I know as yet by faith only, because it is hid- 
den from my eyes.’’ The statements, to every 


70 Three Guardians of 


one of which in order that powerful and sug- 
gestive word is prefixed, cannot be affirma- 
tions on subjects which men could have studied 
out and learned for themselves, nor yet to any 
proposition which can be proved by logic or 
mathematics, or subjected to verification by 
any means available for the purpose in our 
laboratories or workshops; but they are state- 
ments of facts communicated to us, because it 
was for our highest interests to know them, 
and because we should never have known them 
if left to ourselves. If the supernatural ele- 
ment could be strained out of the Creeds, there 
would be nothing left to which the words, “‘ I 
believe,’’ could be applied; they would be- 
come mere verbiage, of a very objectionable 
order; a string of propositions, composed by 
men, out of their own heads, liable to revision, 
correction, modification, or cancellation, like 
the current information of the day, and yet 
pronounced in pompous style, as one might 
use the catchwords of a charlatan, or utter ob- 
solete phrases for such pleasure as may be de- 
rived from listening to their antiquated ring. 


Supernatural Religzon 71 


And here we come upon a topic vital to the 
times—the widespread distrust of Creeds; the 
very name is distasteful to the public ear. 
What does this mean? At the great Mission- 
ary Conference held in the city of New York 
in the spring of the year 1900, a minister of 
repute harangued the audience, at a crowded 
meeting, in a furious invective against Creeds, 
with the cry, ‘‘ Sweep them away! They ob- 
scure the truth and hide Christ from the 
world.’’ The sudden and lamented death of 
that infatuated gentleman very soon after- 
wards confirmed a suspicion that he spoke un- 
der abnormal cerebral excitement, which car- 
ried him beyond the bounds of responsible 
speech; but the tone and temper were charac- 
teristic of these times. 

What does this mean? What light does it 
cast on the effort to drive Supernatural Relig- 
ion out of the world? How shall we explain 
the angry sarcasm, the scoffing contempt with 
which the men of the earth, and even those 
of whom better might be expected, refer to 
Christian dogma and Catholic theology? Is 


72 Three Guardians of 


it the result of an impression that there is no 
certitude in articles of faith, no clear knowl- 
edge on the points mentioned in the Creed, 
and that in religion everything ought to be 
left at loose ends? What is meant by a 
dogma that the word should thus excite to 
anger and disgust? I doubt if another could 
be mentioned so offensive to modern ears. 
And yet a dogma is simply a statement of fact, 
certified by competent authority, and proposed 
for application wherever needed. Every sci- 
ence has its dogmas. That in a right-angled 
triangle the square of the hypothenuse is equal 
to the sum of the squares of the other two 
sides is a fact announced by the geometrician, 
and accepted on his authority by us, who, 
though our lives depended on it, would be un- 
able to demonstrate the proposition. And so 
of other sciences. 

Are there, then, no similar propositions in 
religion, no facts declared by authority, and 
to be accepted whether we can demonstrate 
them or no? Let us take, as the one supreme 
illustration, our Divine Master, our Lord and 


Supernatural Religzon We 


Saviour Jesus Christ. One day, while here on 
earth, He proposed a question about Himself: 
““Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, 
am?’’ And St. Peter made answer in lan- 
guage which is nothing if not dogmatic, “‘ Thou 
art the Anointed, the Messiah, of prophecy, 
the Christ, the Son of the living God.’’! It 
was a plain answer toa plain question. It in- 
cluded the Prophetic element, the Priesthood, 
the Royalty of Christ, the relation of the Son 
of God to God His Father, the Almighty and 
Eternal I AM. 

Does the world ever ask questions about the 
same inscrutable Person now? And if so, are 
we obliged to sit in silence and make no an- 
swer, or go off into glittering generalities about 
influences and sympathies and altruism, and 
Christs that are to be? I affirm that the 
Christ of Catholic dogma, the Christ of theol- 
ogy, is the only true Christ; and in saying so 
I assume that it is possible and necessary to 
give a description of Him in simple language, 
and that without such description we cannot 


7 St. Matt, xvi. 13-16. 


74 Three Guardians of 


know Him in knowledge of whom standeth our 
eternal life. If by the word “‘ Christ ’’ is meant 
a thought, a sentiment, but not a personal 
being; an idea only, but not a being with a 
history and annals; no more than an inspiring 
motive, a character sketch which it were well 
to appreciate and study; a formless power 
floating about somewhere in the atmosphere, 
and acting on the springs of conduct as warmth 
on the body or light on the eyes, then, of 
course, Christ cannot be the Christ of dogma. 
It is impossible to express in personal terms 
such things as sentiments, aspirations, and in- 
fluences, felt, as the air is felt, or constraining 
as the law of gravitation constrains, productive 
of holy desires and good counsels, but exclu- 
sive of personal relationships. 

But if by Christ we mean One like unto us, 
it must be possible to give a description of 
Him, which description to be intelligible must 
take the form of dogmatic propositions; that 
is to say, of statements of ascertained facts 
concerning Him. Moreover, if Christ be not 
man only, but more than man, the description 


Supernatural Religzon 75 





must include the differences between Him and 
us; and if there be aught peculiar or unusual 
in His being, nature, origin, birth, conditions 
of existence, and acts, it must be possible to 
give an account of Him which will cover these 
points so far as they relate to our fortunes and 
destiny. The items of such a description are 
what we call dogmas, and the entire descrip- 
tion makes up dogmatic theology, and the 
Christ so described is the real Christ, and none 
other is true. 

For our protection, also, is dogma needed. 
We have been assured that in the latter days 
there are to be many Christs, false Christs, 
Anti-Christs; pretenders, untrue images and 
reflections, shining like parahelia about the 
sun.! It is contrary to reason that we should 
have been warned against such fallacious phan- 
toms and counterfeits, but left destitute of 
means to discriminate between the false and 
the true; and so again we need dogma for our 
defence against errors so specious that they 
might deceive the very elect.2, The knowledge 

* St. John ii. 18. 7 St. Matt. xxiv. 24. 


76 Three Guardians of 


of Christ, and the ability to discern between 
Him and imitators of Him, depend on our 
possession of clear and distinct information 
about Him, somewhat such as we possess 
about ourselves. 

Yet simple as these principles seem to be, 
there is violent objection to our claim that we 
have such information, and to the terms in 
which it is conveyed. Again I ask, why 
should this be? And how are we to account 
for the contemptuous tone in which men speak 
of the Christ of the Catholic Creed? The ex- 
planation is clear. The age will brook no 
authority; it wishes to get rid of God and His 
Church, and to be free to worship its own 
gods. And so the Christ whom we worship 
and adore as the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life, must be evaporated into a subjective im- 
_ pression in thought and an impersonal moral 
influence, included among the products of evo- 
lution and development, and so detached from 
His hold on the soul and spirit of man. The 
attempt will not succeed. The mock suns 
may shine a while, but they will disappear and 


Supernatural Religion ny 


fade away. The True Sun of Righteousness 
will remain in its place; and in terms of dog- 
matic faith He shall be confessed from gener- 
ation to generation, as that One Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, Begot- 
ten of His Father before all worlds, God of 
God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, 
Begotten, not made; being of One Substance 
with the Father, by whom all things were 
made; and that He, for us men and for our 
salvation, came down from heaven; that He 
was Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Vir- 
gin Mary; and was made Man; that He was 
crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and 
suffered, and was buried, and rose again on 
the third day, according to the Scriptures, and 
that He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on 
the right hand of the Father; and that He 
shall come again with glory to judge both the 
quick and the dead; and that His kingdom 
shall have no end. This is the Christ of the- 
ology; of Catholic, not sectarian or partisan 
theology; and this is the true God and eternal 
Life. 


78 Three Guardians of 


Thus the Creed secures two points necessary 
to the life of man; that we are saved by faith, 
which is the evidence of things not seen; and 
that we are able to give a clear account of 
what we profess, and put it into words intel- 
ligible to all men, though carrying in them 
meanings beyond the comprehension of the 
finite mind; and, finally, that our religion 
keeps us among personal Beings. There is 
not in all the Creed a sentiment, a formless 
aspiration, a subjective impression. There 
are Persons in the Creed, and Persons only, 
and it consists of definition of them, their 
Being, and their Acts, and what they have in- 
stalled and ordained for the aid and blessing 
of men. This is the dogma which the mod- 
ern mind abhors; yet if this practical teaching 
could be silenced the world would roll back- 
ward into darkness, and the sun in man’s 
heaven, the Sun of Light and Life, would pass 
under eclipse, and there remain, until men 
came to their senses, and the obscurity should 
pass away. The supernatural is safe-guarded 
for us in the Creed as set forth by authority 


Supernatural Religion 79 


in the undisputed General Councils. That 
Creed is received by us as of the most true 
warrant of God. We have but one, in sub- 
stance: it cannot be revised, it cannot be 
changed. It contains, not the opinion of men, 
or the peculiar notions of any time or any peo- 
ple. It is the expression of the truth which, 
like God Himself, is the same, yesterday, to- 
day, and forever. 

Thus the Creed presents the truth to the 
intellect, and guards it from loss, by clear crisp 
statement and definition. And next we have 
to consider the Sacramental system, and here 
we touch the point at which God, the Spirit, 
Lord and Life Giver, comes to the heart and 
spirit of man. The Holy Sacraments manifest 
and apply the powers of the world to come. 
They are, to use the incomparable definition, 
““ outward and visible signs of an inward and 
spiritual grace given to us, ordained by Christ 
Himself, as the means whereby we receive the 
same and pledges to assure us thereof.’’ They 
are not inventions or contrivances of ours; 
they are instituted by God. Earthly and com- 


80 Three Guardians of 





mon ordinances were taken, to serve a higher 
purpose; natural actions were transformed to 
serve supernatural ends. Baptism by water 
putteth away the filth of the flesh; but Holy 
Baptism conveys the remission of sins; it re- 
generates the soul and makes the child of na- 
ture a child of grace. Some have held the 
dreadful idea of an absolute and unconditional 
decree, predestinating some to a heaven that 
they did not merit, and some to an eternal rep- 
robation that they could not possibly escape. 
There is no trace of that dark and terrible the- 
ology in the assertion of the Word regarding 
this august Sacrament. Its recipients are 
elected, undoubtedly; but their election is to 
life, and sonship in the Lord, and citizenship in 
the Kingdom; and all the baptized are made 
thereby children of God, members of Christ, 
inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. 

Is this a natural process? Every word of 
the Baptismal offices implies supernatural 
powers, aims, and ends. The solemn rite is 
not an introduction to worldly advantages or 
temporal success; it leads to nothing whatever 


Supernatural Religion 81 


on the secular line; no more to social promo- 
tion or improvement than to enjoyment of the 
pomps and vanities of the world or the sinful 
desires of the flesh. The objects proposed lie 
far away beyond the temporal horizon: the 
baptized are thenceforth citizens of a spiritual 
kingdom, rescued from the power of Satan, 
the Prince of this world, and brought to an in- 
numerable company of angels and the general 
assembly and church of the first-born which 
are written in heaven,! buried with Christ in 
Baptism, and risen with Him therein.? This 
is the first, the initiatory rite of our religion; 
its character cannot be misunderstood. It 
might be represented as a mere form without 
supernatural import, an initiatory ceremony, 
a religious demonstration in the sight of spec- 
tators; it is possible to go so far as to say—it 
has actually been said—that there is nothing 
more mysterious in Christian Baptism than in 
washing one’s face of a morning. But what 
the Church understands by that Sacrament, 
drawing her inspiration from her sacred Books, 


1 Heb. xii. 23. = Cols ay 12. 
6 


82 Three Guardians of 


is something essentially diverse from the ac- 
tions of common life and the affairs of time. 
God touches man herein by the Holy Ghost, 
the Lord and Life Giver, and lifts him up, 
and, showing him his immortal destiny, con- 
fers on him the grace to ensure the same, and 
to follow the Ascended Christ and live near 
Him for ever. 

Look next at Confirmation; Holy Confirma- 
tion, as it may be suitably styled, the adjective 
denoting a character and a stamp of the di- 
vine. Therein also is expressed the wonder- 
working power of the Lord. It is the office of 
the Holy Ghost; it carries the sevenfold gifts 
of the Spirit; it supplements and adds to the 
earlier grace. There is nothing of the secular 
and worldly here. It is a putting forth of 
saving power ina critical stage in a life which 
constitutes a progress forward beyond these 
earthly places, ever forward, ever onward, un- 
til we come to the end. ‘‘ Defend, O Lord, 
this Thy child with Thy heavenly grace, that 
he may continue Thine for ever, and daily 
increase in Thy Holy Spirit more and more 


Supernatural Religion 83 


until he come unto Thy everlasting kingdom.”’ 
What a sweet, unworldly prayer! What a sig- 
nificant invocation! How clear a statement of 
the purpose of the Father towards His chil- 
dren, their relationship to Him, and the object 
of their calling to be His! Yet what faintest 
trace is here of the processes of nature, or mo- 
tives acting on man as a denizen of a transi- 
tory state? 

I pass to another rite in which the contrast 
between the natural and the supernatural is 
clear—the Sacrament of Holy’ Matrimony. 
marriage is, first, a natural contract. But 
Marriage when solemnized by the Church is a 
very different thing. It receives a distinct re- 
ligious character; it is a natural union, subli- 
mated by Divine Grace. And therefore “‘ it is 
not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or 
lightly, but reverently, discreetly, soberly, ad- 
visedly, and in the fear of God.’’ Marriage as 
a contract is recognized by the state and regu- 
lated by law. But for Christians it is much 
more than a contract of that lower nature. It 
is solemnized; the contractors exchange recip- 


84 Three Guardians of 





rocal vows to be broken by death only; they 
are joined together, not so much by man as 
by God; and this is Christian Marriage, or, as 
it is called, Holy Matrimony. ‘‘ Those whom 
God has joined together let no man put asun- 
der.”’ Who does not at once perceive what 
has occurred, how the supernatural has come 
upon the natural and lifted the transaction to 
a higher plane? The Church in holding this 
union between one man and one woman exclu- 
sive of all others to be a union for the whole 
life, and not so terminable as to permit new 
and repeated alliances at pleasure, and being 
well aware of the weakness of human nature, 
also holds that the union which she blesses is 
sacramental in its character, that the parties to 
the contract need a grace to enable them to 
fulfil it, and that such is given to those who 
are good and true of heart. It is a beautiful 
instance of the exaltation of natural things by 
divine power; one man and one woman united 
for an eternal union by a power which imparts 
a strength to keep their troth; these are they 
who are married in the Lord. And when these 


Supernatural Religion 85 


high relations are overlooked and forgotten; 
when man and woman marry for some lower 
motive having to do with the world—for 
money, for title, for social position, for the 
gratification of carnal desire, for a whim, a 
pique; without one prayer to God; without 
one thought save this, that they shall be as 
free, or more free, after marriage than before, 
and that if things go well the State law can 
dissolve the union and speed the way to a 
repetition of this reckless action in some new 
alliance—when this is the popular notion about 
the contract, its obligation, and the easiness 
of nullifying it, as bad temper, or jealousy, or 
weariness, or caprice, may dictate, who does 
not read here as elsewhere the denial of rever- 
ence for supernatural obligations, and the 
determination not to move from the natural 
plane? That flood of adulteries, fornications, 
defilements, envies, hatreds, divorces, and con- 
secutive polygamy by which the land is poi- 
soned; with the communistic corollaries that 
married people are hardly ever happy and sat- 
isfied together, and that the system should be 


86 Three Guardians of 


abolished, and men and women should live in 
common, the resultant offspring being appro- 
priated as its property by the State—this is 
the proper and legitimate outcome of the ban- 
ishment of the supernatural from thought in 
this direction, the denial of the sanctity of the 
marriage relation, and its reduction to a busi- 
ness contract, dissoluble by either party at 
will. Happy are we who are protected from 
such a downfall by our faith and the order 
under which we live. And what clearer illus- 
tration of the force and simplicity of the Apos- 
tle’s explanation of the case when he says of 
the Gentiles, the pagan forefathers of their 
progeny of our own day, “‘ And even as they 
did not like to retain God in their knowledge, 
God gave them over toa reprobate mind, to 
do those things which are not convenient.’’? 
Of Holy Communion it is hardly necessary 
to repeat what has been said already of Holy 
Baptism and Confirmation. It is the sacra- 
mental means by which we are kept in that 
eternal life which was communicated to us in 


1 Rom. i. 28. 


Supernatural Religion 87 


the former sacrament and afterwards confirmed 
and strengthened. It is a super-substantial 
bread. It is that Bread which cometh down 
from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and 
not die.t “‘ For then we eat the flesh of Jesus 
Christ and drink His blood; we are one with 
Him and He with us.”’ 


bread which came down from heaven: if any 


““T am the living 


man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: 
and the bread which I give is my flesh, which 
I give for the life of the world.’’ We draw 
near with faith, with awe, with love, with full 
hearts, and with the devotion of tears, hum- 
bled in our own sight, prostrate before Him 
whom devils dread and angels adore. Con- 
sidering this holy mystery, its purport, con- 
nections, and place in the life of faith, how 
clearly does the truth of the Gospel come forth 
upon the sight! The universal inevitable fact 
of sin; the atoning sacrifice by which it was 
done away; the need of a living faith to ap- 
propriate Christ’s work as done for each of us 
sinners as if none other needed it but he; the 


? St. John vi. 50. 


88 Three Guardians of 


resolve often renewed to live according to that 
which we believe; the timid offering of sub- 
stance and self, body, soul, and spirit, to Him 
who gave Himself for us; what interests of 
this world, what care for earthly things, com- 
port with such acts, desires, professions? O 
God! what are we, and what is our mortal 
life, that we should be thus held and drawn 
and led, step by step, until we come to our 
true home, and are clothed upon with our 
house which is from heaven! 

I shrink from profaning these Holy Mys- 
teries by a reference to the last utterance of 
unbelief concerning them. Yet let it be re- 
membered, incredible though it may sound, 
that men have said, and now repeat, their 
wretched allegation that Christ did not intend 
that the Last Supper should be commemorated 
or continued beyond the hour at which it oc- 
curred; that to make of it a perpetual observ- 
ance in the Church was an after-thought; that 
it is therefore practically an interpolation, the 
invention of man; that there is no specific dif- 
ference between it and those feedings of mul- 


Le —< ~~  - 


Supernatural Religion 89 


titudes on the hills of Galilee, or the domestic 
passover feasts among the Jews. I only men- 
tion these modern notions because my inten- 
tion is to show how clearly the Church wit- 
nesses to that supernatural grace and glory to 
which the world as strenuously denies any 
place in a system regulated, as it considers, 
by natural laws, and by those alone. 

I have spoken of the sacramental system; 
the transition must now be made to the litur- 
gical witness to the supernatural truth. At 
the Holy Communion we take our point of 
departure for that purpose, since it is not only 
sacrament, but also sacrifice. In all religions 
sacrifice has been the leading feature; it was 
so in the religion of Israel; it is so in the re- 
ligion of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic 
Church. By the liturgy is meant, to speak 
strictly, the office for Holy Communion. In 
the liturgy of the Church as anciently arranged, 
and now celebrated in the churches which have 
a genealogy, and a root in the past traceable 
in history, the supernatural is brought before 
the world in scenic and dramatic form, some- 


90 Three Guardians of 


what as the story of Christ’s Passion is repre- 
sented at Oberammergau among the cross- 
crowned hills of the Bavarian Tyrol. Call it 
by what name you will—the Divine Liturgy, 
the Mass, the Eucharist—this is the showing 
forth of the death of Christ till He come. 
Study our own “‘ Order for the Administration 
of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion,”’ 
for the possession of which treasure our hearts 
may well overflow with gratitude, and you will 
find there a presentation of the principles and 
truths of supernatural religion. At first the 
Liturgy—the Divine Liturgy, as they rightly 
styled it—was not celebrated in the sight of 
unbelievers. Now they are admitted to be- 
hold, and taught the dignity of religion and 
the beauty of worship. What is chiefly aimed 
at here but to give glory to God after the or- 
der prescribed as most acceptable to Himself? 
Here are confession, petition, intercession, 
praise, all made, offered, presented to the 
Most High. These acts on the part of man 
make up the substance of divine worship, and 
in every one we strike across the bounds of 


Supernatural Religion gI 





time and the limits of nature and penetrate 
another realm. With surpassing impressive- 
ness is the other world disclosed, as step by 
step the solemn order advances. We hear 
the sobbing of the Kyrie Eleison: 


Lord, have mercy upon us 
Christ, have mercy upon us, 
Lord, have mercy upon us, 


In the Agnus Dei is admitted that terrible 
fact, the sin of man, with the confession of the 
one, the only, hope of our deliverance from it; 
strong crying, with tears to Him that is able 
to save: 


O Lord God, Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of 
the world, have mercy upon us. 


Then also breaks forth upon the air that 
thrilling, uplifting note, the Sursum Corda: 


Lift up your hearts. 
We lift them up unto the Lord. 


Up, indeed, heavenward, above the heights of 
the clouds, to that serene place where they 
enjoy the beatific vision and bow before the 


92 Three Guardians of 


throne. And then in the Ter Sanctus, it 
seems almost as if we poor pilgrims through 
this land of clouds had caught in their parting 
rift a sight of that vision; the heavens open, 
angels and archangels are seen around, above, 
and forth rolls the glorious song, echoed and 
reéchoed from the outward courts, up and 
through the Temple and inner Temple: 


Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth 
are full of Thyglory. Glory be to Thee, O Lord Most High! 


These are the preludes to the grand action 
of all, in which the priest makes the memorial 
before Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, 
relating the acts of Christ, repeating them in 
the breaking of the bread and taking it up into 
his hands; calling to remembrance Christ’s 
blessed passion and precious death, His mighty 
resurrection and glorious ascension; making 
oblation, invoking the presence and power of 
the Holy Ghost, and then repeating the inter- 
cessory prayer for all the whole Church, mili- 
tant here on earth, expectant in the world be- 
yond. This is the showing forth the Lord’s 


Supernatural Religion 93 


death until He come; the representation in 
dramatic form of the story of our redemption; 
this is the highest act of worship ever per- 
formed among men, of which the ancient litur- 
gies are the carefully studied and constructed 
framework, to which the fine arts have made 
their contribution for adornment, embellish- 
ment, emphasis, by painting, sculpture, music, 
poetry; with vestments, lights, processions, 
incense, and whatever is apt to impress the 
mind and move the imagination. Through 
this pure, unbloody, spiritual Sacrifice the su- 
pernatural throbs, burns, glows; the oblation 
is made to the Almighty Father, through 
Christ, His eternal, only begotten Son, by the 
Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth the people of God. 
And herein is conferred on man the bread of 
angels, the food that feedeth unto eternal life, 
and by faith Christ dwelleth in us and we in 
Him. What tongue can utter, what words 
express, things summed up, contained, con- 
ferred here? Sacrifice and sacrament together ; 
God’s sacrifice for us represented to the eye of 
faith; our sacrifice to God of substance and 


94 Three Guardians of 


person; of body, soul, and spirit, Godward; 
the confession of absolute and entire faith in 
the Redeemer of the world; manward, the 
strengthening, refreshing, cleansing. O God! 
what are we to whom such things have been 
granted! And what return are we making to 
Thee in these our poor unworthy lives, while 
the corruptible body presses down the soul 
and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the 
mind that museth upon many things! For 
one who takes this in and believes it all, the 
inner cry, heard under the joy and trustful 
love, must be for pity and mercy; for pity for 
the infirmity which belies our profession; for 
that in us which clogs our steps and holds us 
back from full surrender to God’s Holy Will. 
I have one more item to mention in the list 
of those attesting the unworldly character of 
our religion. We have thought of the doc- 
trine, the sacraments, the liturgy. I must 
speak, though very briefly, of the Ministry. 
Holy Order takes its place among the notes of 
the kingdom. As the Bible is not a book like 
other books, as the Church is not a society 


OE 


Supernatural Religion 95 


like other societies, so the ministry is not like 
other ministries. It must not be confused 
with human professions; its powers are not 
human powers; its commission is not from 
the people, but to the people. The Ordinal 
speaks, in its province, a language as plain, as 
distinct, as that of the liturgy. The laying on 
of hands is by lawful authority, and by lawful 
authority is understood to be Episcopal au- 
thority; no man shall be accounted or taken 
to be a lawful bishop, priest, or deacon among 
us, or suffered to execute any function of the 
ministry unless he be duly called, tried, exam- 
ined, and admitted thereto, and has had epis- 
copal consecration and ordination. The lay- 
ing on of hands confers authority; it conveys 
the Holy Ghost; wonderful language is heard 
when the priesthood is conferred. 

“* Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and 
work of a priest in the Church of God, com- 
mitted unto thee by the imposition of our 
hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they 
are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, 
they are retained.”’ 


96 Three Guardians of 


Are these the words in which a temporal 
office is conferred, or do they exclude, ex vs 
termint, the human calling, the secular char- 
acter? What shall we think of men described 
as ministers of Christ and stewards of the 
mysteries of God? As ambassadors of Christ, 
as though God did beseech us by them? As 
having the ministry of reconciliation? As 
called, appointed, set apart for a divine work, 
a dignity, a weighty office and charge, higher 
and more weighty than any dignity, office, or 
charge in the kingdom of this world. ‘“‘ No 
man taketh this honor to himself.’’!_ The state- 
ment implies a supernatural calling, gift, and 
mission, a character stamped upon the man by 
invisible, potent hands. It implies that these 
men are links between the natural order and 
a higher realm; that they do not receive their 
ministry from man by election of a congrega- 
tion, or call from a society, or other like trans- 
action, nor yet from themselves by an inward 
impression that they have a right to undertake 
the office because they feel as if they ought to. 

1 Heb. v. 4. 


Supernatural Religion 97 


Priests of the Lord are called in none of these 
ways, but aswas Aaron. They are themselves 
persons of a sacramental quality, mediators 
between heaven and earth, conveying grace, 
pardon, peace, in absolution, benediction; 
teaching, guiding, leading towards God. This 
is the ministry to which we have been called; 
accepted deliberately; ratified by solemn oath; 
binding each of us to a certain line of witness 
and action by vows which it is treason to 
break; invested with a character which can 
never be effaced. 

I have thus spoken of the system of the 
Church as a witness throughout to supernat- 
ural religion. Our Book of Common Prayer 
is the ablest and most successful missionary in 
the land. Studying it dispassionately, and 
without prejudice, no one can help but see 
that it teaches of supernatural things, invites 
to a supernatural life, and applies the grace 
needed to the attainment of that which it pro- 
pounds and enjoins. It is an expansion and 
application of the line of truths contained in 


the Holy Scriptures; the miraculous is also 
7 


98 Three Guardians of 


here and everywhere, wonders wrought by 
the power of the Spirit. Think them over 
with profound awe and gratitude—the regen- 
eration of the human soul, the consecration of 
this mortal body, the sevenfold gifts of the 
Holy Ghost; the food that feedeth unto im- 
mortal life; the knitting men and women to- 
gether by irrevocable vows, so as to become 
one flesh, and heirs together of everlasting 
life; the calling some of our members to an 
unworldly ministry, and all this said and done 
without one appeal to natural desire, one 
promise of temporal successes and advantages, 
one reference to food, raiment, lodging, or any 
want or need of this life, one hint of earthly 
honors or duties to the passing age other than 
such as result from the calling of a Christian 
man; this whole system, in design, method, 
appliances, breathes of somewhat above and 
beyond the course of this world. The life led 
conscientiously within it is not a worldly life; 
it is of another and specifically different charac- 
ter; a life of faith, of charity, of hope of things 
eternal; a life hidden with Christ in God. 


Supernatural Religion 99 


I might proceed at great length, enlarging 
on my theme, and drawing from the Minor 
Offices of the Prayer Book, the Kalendar, the 
Collects, the Litany, the Rules and Precepts 
of the Church additional illustrations in proof 
of the completeness of the testimony borne to 
the everlasting Gospel. But this is hardly 
necessary, and the time is far spent. A few 
words shall be added, however, by way of 
conclusion. 

I have called your attention to the contrast 
between the Transcendence and Immanence of 
God as absolutely distinct from His universe 
in substance, yet closely and intimately related 
to it by His power and grace. So it is with 
Our Lord—God and Man in One Person—and, 
therefore, as God, essentially distinct from 
and above the world; as Man, living in the 
world, and giving to all life and breath and , 
all things. So, finally, is it with the Church, 
which, as the Body of Christ, shares Christ’s 
double relation to mankind, and has also a 
transcendence and an immanence among us. 
Note how clearly this is brought out in Holy 


100 Three Guardians of 


Scripture. Christ said of His disciples, “‘ They 
are not of the world, even as I am not of the 
world.’’! But He also said, ‘‘ I pray not that 
thou shouldest take them out of the world.’’? 
Of our Master it is written: “‘ Christ is God, 
over all, blessed for evermore.’’’ It is also 
written that ‘‘ Christ is in us the hope of 
glory.’’4 It is He ‘‘ whom the heavens must 
receive until the times of restitution of all 
things’’;> and yet He is here with us all the 
days, even unto the end of the world. Not 
until the corruptible shall have put on incor- 
ruption, and this mortal shall have put on im- 
mortality, shall the victory of Christ be com- 
plete;’ and yet we are already partakers of 
the Divine Nature and seated with Him in 
heavenly places.® 

This strange contrast runs everywhere 
through the Christian religion; it is found in 
the Church, transcendent in the faith which 


1 St. John xvii. 16. 5 Acts iii, 21. 
2 St. John xvii. 15. ° St. Matt. xxviii. 20. 
*Rom! ix. 5: 7 x Cor. ky. Sas 


* Col. i. 27. © Eph. ii. 6, 


Supernatural Religion IOI 


she teaches, the spiritual powers which she 
exercises, and the objects she holds up for 
pursuit; immanent in her close relation to 
man in the flesh, to the society in which he 
lives, to all legitimate needs in his time. 
These are not contradictions, as the flippant, 
worldly mind might suggest, but distinctions 
rooted in true science and philosophy, and at- 
tested by the inner consciousness of thought- 
ful men. Let us keep them ever before us, 
as supplementing each other. If we were to 
think of God in His transcendence only, our 
conception would be that of a solitary being, 
far away, and indifferent to our fate. If, re- 
volting from that dreary vision, we were to 
think of Him only as immanent in the uni- 
verse, we must run into the error of identify- 
ing Him with His creatures, and existing only 
in them. So of Christ. Consider Him as God 
only, and you cut Him off from men, and 
make the Gospel a fable; consider Him as 
Man only, and you slide down to the level of 
humanitarianism, and the divine element in 
religion is lost. And so of the Church. Regard 


102 Three Guardians of 


her as having a mission for time only, and a 
purpose directed towards transitory ends, and 
you lose the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
the Ecclesia Docens, the seat of a holy law for 
all nations, the foundation of spiritual life; 
nor is anything left but a respectable society, 
professing no faith, making no demand on 
conscience, concerned solely with the affairs 
of this life and the temporal and transient in- 
terests of man. But combine here as else- 
where the transcendent and the immanent, 
and you have our own religion, first of all, 
heaven-born, divine, and equally practical and 
efficient for all our needs. God is the Lord of 
the universe, yet He has His habitation among 
the sons of men. Christ is God, over all, 
blessed for evermore. By Him all things were 
made; and never, as God, did He or could He 
part with aught that belonged to Him as God, 
as, forexample, His omnipotence, omniscience, 
and omnipresence; and yet was He Very Man, 
one with us in everything except our sin; the 
Second Adam, the Way, the Truth, the Life. 
And His Church is the Mother of the Prophets, 


Supernatural Religion 103 


the House of the Priests, the Palace of the 
King; teaching, revealing, building up, work- 
ing miracles; and yet, at the same time, the 
home of the spiritual man, the refuge of the 
poor, the storehouse of charity, the fountain 
of all blessings corporal-and spiritual, the agent 
of true advance, the conservator of social or- 
der, the defender of the faith, the light of the 
ages as they move on and pass away. 











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